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Title: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nina Baym, Thomas E. Connolly ISBN: 0-14-243726-3 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.48 (298 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Read the intro first, don't skip it like I did.
Comment: I will recommend that if you read this book, to not skip the introductory, it's crucial. (I did and I had to start over when I was almost finished.)
To sum up the introductory: it's long and talks about the nameless narrator and how the story started. The narrator finds some documents in the unoccupied second floor of the building he works at. After going through the documents he finds a large scarlet "A" with beautiful embroidery wrapped around some manuscripts, which he later rewrites. He soon discovers that the manuscripts were 100 years old and written 100 years before he found them.
If you are seeking for a book with more meanings then one and a harder vocabulary you might have found the book for you. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is aimed for an audience with a higher vocabulary and a good understanding of irony and symbolism. While reading this book it also might be helpful to know that motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help develop and inform the text's major themes; because they are throughout the story and occur from the beginning. This book would be good for either male or female of an age that can do well in a 12.0 accelerated reader book. Just remember that is a 24-chapter book with a long introduction.
I had a hard time enjoying this book because I didn't read the introductory and had to start over. I also wasn't prepared for the vocabulary and all of the symbolism. Another thing I didn't understand was that there was more meaning to the book then just the words. If anyone asked me I would give it a 3 on a scale of 1-5. It's not that The Scarlet Letter was a bad book, because it is very well written, but I just didn't get into it.
12/18/03
Rating: 4
Summary: 'tis what on thou breast Dimmesdale?
Comment: Nathaniel Hawthorne's mid-19th century novel reflects the strict Puritan Enviornment two-hundred years prior to the release of the book. What can be a tedious read at times is ultimately a redeeming piece of literature exposing the hypocrisy of the "godly" Puritan Communities.
Much of the novel gives us inductive information forcing the reader to either ignore or figure out much of the background of the story for themselves. Regardless, Hester Prynne, the Protagonist, is portrayed as a strong women who has a extra-marital affair with an unknown man of the Boston Community. While raising her eerie bastard child, "Pearl", Hester refuses to compromise or openly break down for her crime. There are numerous plot twists, including a perverted love-triangle, that gives this novel it's romantic characteristics.
Although there was probably hundreds of novels written during this time period that are stylistically superior to Hawthorne's masterpiece. This work has remained a mainstay as required reading because of its radical notions that women are equal and sometimes stronger than men emotionally, and deserve respect for the works they perform for society. It's a dark novel with many redeeming qualities, if you can get over the lofty-archaic English this should be an interesting read.
Rating: 5
Summary: About the Scarlet Letter
Comment: The Scarlet Letter
Set in Boston in the 1640s, The Scarlet Letter is the story of three people who suffer for their wrongs and a strict Puritan community which enforces obedience. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, writes the story of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Author Dimmsdale who each commit wrong and suffer for it.
The Scarlet Letter begins before the door of a jail on a gloomy day in Puritan New England. Hester Prynne, a woman who has committed adultery, is being led out to public view on the town scaffold. According to Puritan law, Hester should have been burned on that scaffold for her wrongdoing, but the townsmen have been merciful to let her live. However, she must always wear a scarlet letter A, made of her own needlework, as a symbol for adultery unless she tells who her partner was. She refuses to divulge this information and is dispatched to live awall the town in a cottage in the nearby woods. There she keeps herself busy working as a seamstress and raising her daughter, Pearl. During the same day that Hester was viewed on the scaffold, a physician named Roger Chillingworth appears in the town. The townsfolk immediately think him to be a blessing, for their well-loved minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, seemed to be growing weak, and a well-learnt physician was what they thought he needed. Unknown to all the townsmen, Chillingworth was Hester's rightful husband. When he sees her on the scaffold for committing adultery he vows to revenge her partner. This kind of revenge reduces him to a kind of demonic work which he begins on the minister once he becomes his live-in physician. The minister seems to be suffering from something more than physical infirmity. Hester Prynne begins to feel bad about her own quietitude and tells Dimmesdale who Chillingworth really is.
I think that this a good book for anyone interested in reading an exciting story that has a moral lesson too. It contains some particular information about Puritan Boston although it is not an in-depth study on this matter. Nathaniel Hawthorne also wrote The House of the Seven Gables, a novel that takes place in the Regional New England era. It is also a good book and contains a moral lesson.
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Title: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ISBN: 0684801523 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics) by Mark Twain, Guy Cardwell, John Seelye ISBN: 0142437174 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.00 |
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Title: Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (Cliffs Notes) by Cliffs Notes, Susan Van Kirk ISBN: 076458605X Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 22 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Catcher in the Rye Mass Market - Paperback by J.D. Salinger ISBN: 0316769487 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck Centennial Edition (1902-2002) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0142000663 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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