Search results
Need help with Chapter 1 in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter? Check out our revolutionary side-by-side summary and analysis.
- Characters
The Scarlet Letter Character Analysis | LitCharts. The...
- Chapter 14
The Scarlet Letter: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis Next....
- Quizzes
The Scarlet Letter Quizzes | LitCharts. The Scarlet Letter...
- Themes
The Scarlet Letter presents a critical, even disdainful,...
- Quotes
Find the quotes you need in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The...
- Symbols
The Scarlet Letter Symbols | LitCharts. The Scarlet Letter...
- The Custom House
The Scarlet Letter The Custom House Summary & Analysis |...
- Plot Summary
The Scarlet Letter begins with a prelude in which an unnamed...
- Characters
- Plot summary
- Analysis
- Synopsis
- Themes
- Significance
This first chapter contains little in the way of action, instead setting the scene and introducing the first of many symbols that will come to dominate the story. A crowd of somber, dreary-looking people has gathered outside the door of a prison in seventeenth-century Boston. The buildings heavy oak door is studded with iron spikes, and the prison ...
The one incongruity in the otherwise drab scene is the rosebush that grows next to the prison door. The narrator suggests that it offers a reminder of Natures kindness to the condemned; for his tale, he says, it will provide either a sweet moral blossom or else some relief in the face of unrelenting sorrow and gloom.
As the crowd watches, Hester Prynne, a young woman holding an infant, emerges from the prison door and makes her way to a scaffold (a raised platform), where she is to be publicly condemned. The women in the crowd make disparaging comments about Hester; they particularly criticize her for the ornateness of the embroidered badge on her chesta letter...
These chapters introduce the reader to Hester Prynne and begin to explore the theme of sin, along with its connection to knowledge and social order. The chapters use of symbols, as well as their depiction of the political reality of Hester Prynnes world, testify to the contradictions inherent in Puritan society. This is a world that has already fal...
But the images of the chaptersthe public gatherings at the prison and at the scaffold, both of which are located in central common spacesalso speak to another Puritan belief: the belief that sin not only permeates our world but that it should be actively sought out and exposed so that it can be punished publicly. The beadle reinforces this belief w...
Plot. The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (1861). Hester Prynne and Pearl in the foreground. In Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a baby of unknown paternity.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 晧四郎 木畑
- 1850
Summary: Chapter 1. Ponyboy Curtis, the narrator, begins the novel with a story: he is walking home one afternoon after watching a Paul Newman film, and his mind starts to wander. He thinks about how he wants Paul Newman’s good looks, though he likes his own greaser look.
Summary. In this first chapter, Hawthorne sets the scene of the novel — Boston of the seventeenth century. It is June, and a throng of drably dressed Puritans stands before a weather-beaten wooden prison.
Free summary and analysis of Chapter 1 in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter that won't make you snore. We promise.
People also ask
What is Chapter 1 of the Scarlet Letter about?
What is the moral of the Scarlet Letter?
Who wrote the Scarlet Letter?
Is the Scarlet Letter based on a true story?
Course Hero's video study guide provides in-depth summary and analysis of chapter 1 of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter.
