The Scarlet Letter Essay -- Literary Analysis, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The red-faced Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a cult classic. And with good reason. Anyone who simply believes that the cognomen of this book just signifies that the protagonist wears a scarlet A on her dress in punishment of her adultery is ignorant. Obviously this paper would not be required if such were true. Instead, The Scarlet Letter is extremely ambiguous. One groundwork argue that the scarlet letter is a character itself. I intend to flesh this out in literary, historic, and symbolic terms.What is The Scarlet Letter really well-nigh? It has all the ingredients of a soap opera, but it is far more than that, (Johnson 1995) writes Claudia Durst Johnson in her book which analyzes The Scarlet Letter thoroughly. Rather it is about the consequences of breaking the moral code, or in this case a moral law. It is about failing to be true to human nature. It is about cruel and terrible revenge. It is about the hypocrisy of members of a community who refuse to acknowledge that each of them is just as human, just as vulnerable to passionate feelings as the women they label an adulterer. I could go on and on. The Scarlet Letters psychological aspects seem never-ending.The letter is a symbol. While it has many implied meanings, it also has literal meanings. The first and most obvious of the latter(prenominal) is that Hesters A stands for adultery and , as the narrator puts it, womens frailty and sinful passion (83). But the A on her breast begins to represent dissimilar things as the story unfolds. For example, some people begin to think the A stands for able when she helps out the community. In the course of the novel, the A seems to encompass the entire kitchen stove of human beingness, from the earthly and passionate adulteress to the pure and... ...in America during the seventeenth century. He wanted his readers to develop their own interpretation of how America has changed. A number, that for certain exceptions, usually does not mean anything other tha n its value. Thus, it was ruled out.Why is it The Scarlet Letter? Why not The Scarlet A? A title is much more effective when it is more general. At the end of the day, authors write books to make money. The Scarlet A is a confusing, as well as less(prenominal) appealing, title that would have sold much less. The title is better off being general, and then allowing the book to be more specific. What is more memorable? The Scarlet Letter or The Scarlet A Adultery in the 1600s? The Scarlet Letter was titled the way it was for a reason. It symbolizes and appeals to every major basis in the book, while making it obvious on first glance what the book centralizes on.