Book report of “The Scarlet Letter”

The Scarlet Letter is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who is a great American writer. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a representative of Dark Romanticism, a literary subgenre that emerged from the transcendental philosophical movement popular in nineteenth-century America. The themes are often on the inherent evil and sin of humanity.

The Scarlet Letter is a love tragedy happening under cruel Puritanism in New England. The story starts in

seventeenth-century in a settlement. A young woman, named Hester Prynne, has been led from the town with her infant child in her arms, and on the breast of her gown "a rag of cloth" that "assumed the shape of a letter". The Scarlet Letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed. A man, who is elderly and a stranger to the town, asks a people what is happening. The man explains that Hester is being punished for adultery. It is

apparent that, while waiting for her husband, Hester has had an affair, leading to the birth of her daughter. She will not reveal her lover's identity, so Hester is led to the town scaffold and asked by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child's father. The elderly onlooker is Hester's missing husband,

who is now practicing medicine and calling himself . He reveals his true identity to Hester and medicates her daughter. They have a frank discussion but Hester refuses to tell him the name of her lover and

Chillingworth tells her that he will find out anyway. He settles in Boston to practice medicine there. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and her daughter, Pearl, grows into a naughty child. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but with the help of , a minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to suffer from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth moves with him so that he can provide his patient with middle care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the minister's torments and Hester's secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers an "A" burned into Dimmesdale's chest, which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.By taking full advantage of being a physician, Chillingworth continuously adds

psychological torments to the clergyman. Eventually, the poor

creature cannot bear the sin rooting deeply in his heart and admits his adultery with Hester in front of the town people. Soon after confession, Dimmesdale dies at the scaffold. The novel ends up with Hester and Dimmesdale share a same tombstone bearing a scarlet letter A.

What I am deeply impressed is the love between Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. Because of the true love, Hester would rather die than tell the truth. Owing to love, she can suffer a great pain. A lover in need is a lover indeed.

A lot of married couples will say goodbye when catastrophe suddenly arrives, but the two people, especially Hester, still stick to her love. I think we should learn the loyalty from her.

第二篇：Impression of “The Scarlet Letter”《红字》英文读后感

Impression of “The Scarlet Letter”

The Scarlet Letter opens with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The nameless narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the customhouse’s attic, he discovered a number of documents, among them a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript, the work of a past surveyor, detailed events that occurred some two hundred years before the narrator’s time. When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a fictional account of the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the final product.

The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan

settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.

Themes

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Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their humanness, that which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate—two “labors” that seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge—specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the “burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and

Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hester’s sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding of others.

Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be incompatible with a state of purity.

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The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man,” the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the “Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child. The characters also try to root out the causes of evil: did Chillingworth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the “evil” she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed responsible for Chillingworth’s transformation into a malevolent being? This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points out in the novel’s concluding chapter, both emotions depend upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdale’s lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the “Black Man,” because her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.

After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and resume a normal life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when 3

Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering letting her remove the letter. Hester’s behavior is premised on her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow others to determine it for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of society’s power over her: she would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desires to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.

Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the community’s minister, he is more symbol than human being. Except for Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his obvious anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately,

Dimmesdale never fully recognizes the truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality and strength are gained by quiet self-assertion and by a reconfiguration, not a rejection, of one’s assigned identity.

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