2004.04.24. Sat. The Scarlet Letter ^^지혜~*

[콜리]

The Scarlet Letter

  Have you ever read this book? One of my major classes, I take the 'The 19th century American novel' and this book is our main textbook. Some days ago, I wrote an essay about symbolism in The Scarlet Letter, so today's my speech is based on that paper. (Do you know the story of this book? If you don't know, I'll tell you briefly. There are four main characters, Hester prynne, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Pearl. Hester originally lived with her husband Roger Chillingworth in England. But they decided to move ,and Chillingworth sent Hester first to America alone because he had to solve some business matters. In America, Hester waited him to come. Meanwhile, she committed adultery and gave birth to a girl, Pearl. Pearl's farther was Dimmesdale who was a famous and highly regarded as a priest. Hester was punished in front of many people and had to wear a "A" on her dress. However, nobody knew that fact that Dimmesdale was Pearl's father. He also suffered from pain inside his mind, but he couldn't tell the truth. His anguish was exposed physically, his health became bad. Then, Chillingworth appeared. He had studied a lot and knew well about medicine. So, he became a doctor of Dimmesdale and decided to revenge himself to the priest. He was a so wicked person. Like evil, he destroyed Dimmesdales spirit. Finally, Dimmesdale confessed his fault in front of people and at that place he died.)
  
  The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is considered as the first symbolic romance in American literature. He always tried to describe human mind through the symbolic representation of external things. He wrote in his writing <creative note> like this, "If a person committed certain sin, it would be turned up as his or her physical defect." In The Scarlet Letter, you could understand his saying.
    From now on, I would like to tell you about what I felt by focusing on some symbolic materials.  First of all, the Scarlet Letter deals with the repressive and authoritarian Puritan society in the seventeenth century of American history. So, there are several things that represent the Puritanism. In the very first part of this story, it shows the background such as scaffold, ponderous prison, churchyard and so on. These are all grey, black, and negative images so that they symbolize the strict moralism and death. Especially, the scaffold is the most important place, which  the main story started with Hester's humiliation and ended with Dimmesdale's miserable death there.
  On the other hand, there was also a rosebush in bloom lonely under the shade of a big tree. It seemed to look like the situation of Hester. Even though in the barren, gloomy Puritan society, the beauty of nature, life, warm humanity were existed. It symbolizes the ability of nature to endure and outlast man's activities.
  Next, the title 'The Scarlet Letter' itself is a dominant symbol. "A" that is attached on Hester's bosom originally meant 'Adultery' and 'original sin'. However, as time went on, the letter's meaning was changed to stand for 'Angel', 'Able' and 'mercy' according to attitude of Hester. Although many people blame and ignore her, she didn't care much and served for the public wholeheartedly as enduring the pain in her mind. If I were in her shoes, I would avoid the people and turn my back on the world. I think Hester is a quite wise and great person, and she deserve to be loved by Dimmesdale.    
It points out the ultimate meaninglessness of the community's system of judgment and punishment. No one could be perfect and it is wrong to punish someone with only a human contrivance.
A more important thing is the symbolism reflected by the four main characters. Among them, I'll tell you about Pearl. Pearl is a sort of living version of her mother's transgression. But, she is more than a mere punishment to Hester. The child has been sent from sacred God, so she is a blessing. Her existence gives Hester reason to live and it is symbol of love and redemption. If there were Hester alone, she couldn't endure her pain and shouldn't know the real meaning of love.
  The message that I received throughout this symbolic story is the probelm human spirit. It was written so long time ago, but this kinds of moral matter can affect our mind because there are more serious, terrible troubles caused by lack of humanity nowadays. Our mind is undescribable thing. There is a saying that you can sound water ten fathoms deep, but you cannot sound the human heart a single fathom. It is so difficult to deal with a person's mind. Therefore, we should reflect ourselves before criticizing the other person, besides we should try to control our emotion and understand others with warm heart. That is a way to get along well with many people happily in our society. The more people have high spirit, the more our life would become beautiful.