The Scarlet Letter

                  This novel, "The Scarlet Letter", was actually an interesting book, and for that time, I found it to be very racy.  Things like adultry "cheating" these days, are not a big deal honestly.  It is now a very personal and private thing, unless you are some sort of a celebrity.  But back then,  in very religous times it was a huge deal, and women, like Hester.  This gave women like this a kind of infamy, and there affairs and the children they had were open to the public for critizism.  Throughout the story, a huge theme that I had found was that of Sin, and Guilt.  In those times, the people who believed in God as a high power were good, and those who didnt were evil.  They deemed those who dont follow the ways of god sinners, and the acts that they did that god would not want us to do were sins.  To me, the main sin of the story was of course that of Hester and Dismadale, but also, the revenge of Chillingworth was a great sin.  He did not feel the immense guilt that haunted Dismadale though, because he was the ministor was was suppose to be a higher power connected to god.  The entire plot and theme of the book revolve around his sins, and the guilt that strikes him until the very end when he reveals his "scarlett letter" that he shared with Hester.

                    The most interesting relashionship that i found throughout the book is that of Pearl and her mother.  Even though she is a child of sin and made her life so difficult and full of hate, Hester loves her child and early on in the book when she is threatend to have Pearl taken away from her, she is worried and confronts the governeor about it.  I beilive that the reason Hester loved Pearl so much is because in a sense she was all she had at that time, and needed someone.  I also belive that Hester never thought of Pearl to be a demon child like the rest of the town did.  The beginning of the novel was very realisitc, where the narrorator begins to find things leading him to writing the story, but the story was not realisitc, and had a sense of fairytale and witchcraft, like for example when the sun does not light of Hester before she takes of her scarlett letter.

               I found alot of Symbolism in the story, and i believe this book has had more than in any other book that we have read so far.  The biggest symbol i found, was the acutal scarlet letter.  It represented a huge theme in the novel, as i said before, sin.  Other symbols that i found relevant to the story were the Meteor,  being a letter "A", but i was surpised that the town took it as a good omen.  The theme of sin also has a symobl in the story, i found that to be Pearl.  I havnt encounterd a lot of actual characters being symbols, but it makes since because she is the spawn of a sin, and is a living breathing thing that is present throughout the story.

         Overall,  the novel was interesting and was actually a favorable book that I have read.  I though that most of the books we had to read this summer were ones that I was not going to like.  I liked the book because it made you think, but not in the way that the Great Gatsby did.  Unlike the Great Gatsby, which makes you wonder what is going to happen in the future, this book makes you wonder what is going to happen right now to the characters, and when the book ends, the characters are at a greater peace, the main characters are in fact of the highest form of peace, which is death.

                                I cant believe summer reading is almost over! This book was a good one, and the Crucible looks very interesting. Hmm.... Be back next week.  - Maxwell