Crimes & Punishments
This grim wooden platform stands in the center of the marketplace and serves as the primary site of public shaming.
What is the scaffold?
Hester supports herself and her daughter financially through this highly skilled trade, though she is never allowed to work on wedding garments.
What is needlework (sewing)?
his is the specific American colony and city where the story takes place.
What is Boston, Massachusetts?
Chillingworth captures the town's attention because he claims to have learned medical secrets from these people while held captive.
Who are the Native Americans?
This beautiful, fragrant plant grows completely wild right outside the heavy oak door of the prison.
What is a rosebush?
When Hester is standing on the scaffold in Chapter 2, she adamantly refuses to reveal this specific piece of information to the magistrates.
Who is the father of her baby?
In Chapter 7, Hester and Pearl visit Governor Bellingham's mansion under the pretense of delivering a pair of these custom-made luxury items.
What are embroidered gloves?
Chapter 1 notes that regardless of how utopian their goals were, the Puritans immediately built a cemetery and this bleak building.
What is a prison?
Dimmesdale has a constant habit of placing his hand over this specific part of his body when he is nervous, in pain, or speaking of his health.
What is his heart?
Hester chose the name "Pearl" for her daughter for this symbolic reason.
What is because she was purchased at a great price (Hester gave up everything for her)?
Chillingworth forces Hester to take a solemn vow in the prison cell promising never to reveal this secret to the public.
Who was Hester's husband?
While playing by the seashore in Chapter 15, Pearl uses seaweed to mimic her mother by crafting her own version of the letter out of this specific color.
What is green?
This is the specific location of the small, isolated cottage where Hester and Pearl live to distance themselves from the rest of the Boston community.
What is the peninsula's edge (or the outskirts of town / the seashore)?
When Chillingworth and Dimmesdale live together, the townspeople refer to Chillingworth as this parasite, which doubles as an old term for a doctor.
What is a leech?
In Chapter 12, an important late-night event occurs on the scaffold when Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale hold hands, forming this metaphorically charged visual phrase used by Hawthorne to describe their hidden truth.
What is an "electric chain"?
To punish himself for his hidden guilt, Arthur Dimmesdale uses a bloody whip, fasts until he faints, and performs this act all night long.
What is staying awake praying?
While visiting the Governor's mansion, Pearl throws a tantrum because she wants to eat this specific sweet food item growing in the garden.
What are pumpkins (or squashes)?
This dark, shadowed location represents a place of total freedom outside the reach of Puritan law, where Mistress Hibbins allegedly meets her coven.
What is the forest (or the woods)?
Over the years, Chillingworth’s physical appearance changes; his face grows darker and his eyes develop a strange, burning glow associated with this biblical figure.
Who is Satan (or the Devil)?
In Chapter 13 ("Another View of Hester"), many townspeople begin to say the letter on Hester's chest stands for this positive trait instead of Adultery.
What is "Able"?
Hester breaks her years of silence to confront Chillingworth and demand that he stop doing this to the minister.
What is torturing (or psychologically tormenting) him?
When looking at the suit of armor in the Governor’s hall, Hester is horrified because the polished metal acts as this object, distorting her appearance so she is hidden behind her badge of sin.
What is a mirror?
Chillingworth claims that he gathered his dark, mysterious medicinal weeds from this specific final resting place of a town resident.
What is a grave?
Chillingworth notices a physical deterioration in Dimmesdale and believes his bodily illness is entirely caused by a disease of this non-physical part of a person.
What is the soul?
While standing on the scaffold at midnight in Chapter 12, Dimmesdale sees a meteor flash across the night sky, which the town sexton later claims was a sign honoring this recently deceased town leader.
Who is Governor Winthrop?