On a Field, Sable, the Letter A, Gules

In childhood, we all heard Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella. Beautiful maid and handsome prince are always the characters in the fairy tale, falling in love at first time, and having happy ending.The Scarlet Letter is different from these love stories. There is a story happened in Boston about 200 years ago.In this story,the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale,a young clergyman,who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into the wild forest-land, just like a prince,helped Hester Prynne walk the shadow of

unsuccessful marriage.In my opinion, they should get good wishes.After all ,Hester Prynne didn't love her husband at all. However, the reality was so cruel, even I couldn't image how she could stand that suffering, standing a certain time upon the platform, being blamed by all the people in the town and wearing a letter A lifetime which means

adultery.It exposes the essential of Puritan society, the deception of religion and the hypocrisy of morality.

First of all, I wanted to talk about Hester Prynne. I was left the impression that she was as tough as nail and she

was a great mother. After having serval month in the prison, those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. Although at that time nobody could really feel how miserable she was. Maybe as the book writing, "in the nature, however, there is a provision alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it". Hester Prynne' s sentence was that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, even so, she sustained herself as best a woman might. I think perhaps all of these was not the most merciless attacks for her. The man who she loved most have no courage to stand in front of her ,instead of protecting her from laughing at and abusing by others.She didn't flee as if the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul,and work out another purity than that which she had lost. As the child grew up. Pearl were her the only depend on. For Hester, Pearl was not only her gift that god gave her, but the thing that religion punish her.

Undoubtedly, Hester was a person worthy of our admiration. On the one hand, I believed that she was

opinionated. If I were her, I would speak the fact and I would choose him to take the responsibility with me. After all, as a man and a father, he had the duty to protect the mother and daughter. On the other hand, she might be

wise. As what she done, it offered relative stability at least. Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that

sufficed to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. She exhausted her ability to help others who were in need. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and right wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost

benevolence. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the taken, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.

Besides having strong will, as far as I can see, Hester also had a broad mind. Compared with both Roger

Chillingworth and people in this town. She could forgive those people that had hurt her in the past.

As for the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, he didn't really

respectful in my mind in spit of having a good knowledge of religion. So it does, he was the typical person who was destroyed by religion deeply. Compelled against religions pressures and doctrines, even had no courage to seek love.

The minister for save the long-sought regards of women, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference when Pearl took his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it. It would be punished and sneered at all the time if he acknowledged he was Pearl's father. But as least, he could enjoy the warmth and safety of home without being cautions everyday. I didn't know at that moment wether such thoughs came to his mind or not. On the other hand, the minister had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although in single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of then. But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts-for those it was easy to arrange-but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as the slergyman of that day stood, he was only the more

trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order

inevitably hemmed him in .As a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.

In the end of the story, Arthur Dimmesdale put a bold front on himself and religion. At that time, he was not

cowardlly at all, and he was the great husband and father in the world.

Roger Chillingworth, a key character, moved forward the plot development. He took up his residence in the Puritan town, as Roger Chillingworth, without other

introduction than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common measure. His aim didn't be so simple for medical research. The real purpose was to seek to win a friendly regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility, thus, to uncover the truth. Didn't he know at the same time he discovered the fact he would also have a piece of sorrow in his heart? Nathaniel Hawthorne used symbolism flexible through a series of images deepens the connotation and broadens the

descriptive methods of the novel. The whole novel run through the symbolic image of scarlet and the meaning of scarlet changed with the development of story. In other word, the lifetime of Hester eliminated negative effect of scarlet constantly and gave new definition. The scarlet she worn meaned "Adultery" at first, however, it convert it into "Angle" and "Able", at last, she became a vessel of high principle. The novel was full of abundant images such as moral court torturing the soul , a creek which is the boundary between vice and purity, gloomy spiritual wilderness, out-fashioned and degenerate Roger Chillingworth and the Pearl's marriage meaning the returning of some culture.

The author tell us a sentimental love story happened serval centuries ago with romanticism. This love was

destined to be a struggle between human and divine under the religious atmosphere. Living in the old world, Hester came across her husband when she knew nothing of love, and then coming to the new world, she met the great love of my life but they couldn't spend together the happy life with each other until they all died.

I found a yellow beam of sunlight, a real long-term love and a sensitive and wistful response.

On a Field, Sable, the Letter A,

Gules

姓名：李静彤

班级：2011级英语一班

学号：01107059