The-Scarlet-Letter-红字读后感.doc

The Scarlet Letter is rich with symbols which can stand for an idea, belief, action, or material entity. It is a characteristic of Hawthorne. He used symbols to reveal the psychology of the characters. So in the essay, I will mainly talk about the symbols in this book.The most important symbol in the book is the “the scarlet letter A”. When I first saw the main character Hester Prynne at the beginning of the book, the image come to my mind was the woman appeared in the bible, the angle “took me away in the Spirit into a waste land: and I saw a woman seated on a bright red beast, full of evil names, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was clothed in purple and bright red, with ornaments of gold and stones of great price and jewels; and in her hand were a gold cup full of evil things and her unclean desires”(revelution 17:3, 17:4). Here the woman “full of evils” was dressed in red, and seated on red. Red, or scarlet color was a kind of symbol of sin.The “scarlet” in this novel, however, can reflect much, not only sin.The color “scarlet” is just like the love between Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale, pure, sincere and enthusiastic. This kind of love is the foundation of the family and the society. It should be cherished if the society is well established. But, the novel was written in the mid-nineteenth century and took the mid-seventeenth century for the events it describes. People at that time sought to establish an ideal community in America that could act as a model of influence for what they saw as a corrupt civil and religious order. This sense of mission was the center of their religious and social identity. Directed toward the realization of such an ideal, the Puritans required a strict moral regulation; anyone in the community who sinned threatened not only their soul, but the very possibility of civil and religious perfection in America and in England. Not coincidentally, the years Hawthorne chose to represent in The Scarlet Letter were the same as those of the English Civil War fought between King Charles I and the Puritan Parliament; the latter was naturally supported by the New England colonists. Under the rule of the Puritanism, the human nature had been constrained; people can not develop in a healthy way. The scarlet feeling that should be full of passion and happiness was suppressed. Meanwhile, the “scarlet” can also stand for the punishment of stake. Hester and Dimmesdale were just like pagans; their guilty souls were burned by the fire, and the fire had turned into the scarlet letter “A”. That meant their souls were purified in the long lasted punishment. As the novel described that Hester was a young woman who was tall with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication. There is no doubt that she was a charming woman, especially in the common crowd. But the scene was quite irony. This charming woman was the sinner. The scarlet letter A was on the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread. She was a sinner who committed adultery more than an attractive woman. The scarlet letter A people gave her was to show she was an adulterous woman. It was a shame; As A is the first letter of the alphabet which means the start. As to doctrine, the start is fallen. The origin of the world is fallen. Adam and Eves leaving Eden was a punishment for their act. Life beginning was a kind of fallen. The story begins with the scene that Hester was on the scaffold to accept the punishment implied that the beginning was the fallen. The name of Arthur Dimmesdale started with the letter A just liked Adam. He should be together with Hester, but he did not. For Hester, she hadnt been faced with this, so whats her first impulse is to clasp the infant closely to her bosom to hide this shame. But in a moment, she realized its unwise to hide a shame by another. Then she smiled, in a haughty way. At this moment, the scarlet letter A was no longer a kind of symbol of “adulterous”, a shame, but the fire inside that gave her the support together with the baby on her arm. She pulled through this situation and in her later life the scarlet A also accomplished her and turned into different meanings. It just like a ferule that regularize her behavior, cultivate her virtue, constrained her human nature and also firmed her faith to pursuit her happiness. In her latter life, she lived a pure life. Her needle work was supremely good that the scarlet letter A seemed to become a praise that represented art. Not only had her needle work winned her praise, but she herself was such a kind person who always helped others who were in trouble that wined others respect. The scarlet letter A became a symbol of “able” or “angle”. It could be also regarded as the cross of nuns, stranded for “Acts of the apostles”. Till this moment, the scarlet letter A was no longer a symbol of shame. Whats interesting, in Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales, there also a nun who had an A. The scarlet letter itself is the principal symbols in the novel, and there are many others. In the first chapter the wild rosebush symbolizes dissent in its reference to the historical figure Anne Hutchinson, who led a group of religious dissenters in colonial Massachusetts. Meanwhile it also symbolizes Hester and even a foreshadowing of the scarlet letter that she wears. Whats more, individuals in the novel can also be understood as symbols. For instance, Arthur Dimmesdale, with all of his profound pain and suffering, is symbolic of the high value of truth and the irony of its unattainability. In others eyes, there would “never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spoke this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his.” Such a high praised priest, however, was not as perfect as they thought. Dimmesdale i