Scarlet Letter Symbols

The town, the place where Hester's sin of adultery is established, signifies a sense of civilization with a strict influence of Puritan law.The main form of punishment for committed sins in the city was to publicly humiliate the offender to the point of insanity. With such a close society, everyone heard of the situation regarding Hester's life and the news traveled fast that she should be shunned from the rest of society. In the city, cruel acts and enormous amounts of hatred arose, making it difficult for her to live a normal life as she hoped to. As seen while she stands on the scaffold, Hester felt as if she was a complete outcast from the community around her, but she realized that she was not the only outcast present. This is shown by Hawthorne's statesment, "From the intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning on the outskirts of the crowd a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts" (Hawthorne ch. 3 p. 1). Her husband, Roger Chillingworth was apart of the crowd that stared at her, so her mind was locked in on trying to figure out why he was there. This was representative of the town itself, full of uncertainty, and often caused weariness of what was good and what was evil.

In contrast, there was the forest. The location of specific events that showcased peace and equality. In the forest, people from the city could, in a sense, let their guard down. There was no scrutiny from the towns people, nor rules to abide by, just a place to get away from everything. Characters, such as Hester and Dimmesdale, who experienced the forest were able to be their self and not worry about that was going on in the world. The way Hawthorne portrays the nature of the forest is as if life there is beautiful. He mentions the creek and animals in which Pearl plays to be almost a direct contrast to the people that they encounter in town, who are cruel and full of hate. As Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale take their trip together into the forest, they each became cheerful, as if a dark burden had been lifted of their shoulders. Hester even decides to reveal a beautiful side of her in which we had not seen up until this point,"By another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features (Hawthorne 211-212)." Here in the forest, is where her thoughts came to life and became more positi