Chapter 1 -2
Religion and law
What were almost identical to the Puritans?
Hester recognizes him as she stands on the scaffold, with his oddly shaped body.
Who is her husband?
"But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like," this place in our lives.
What is where something bad has happened to us?
Stones
What does Pearl fling at the Puritan children?
Because he was captured by Indians after a shipwreck.
Why didn't Hester's husband get to Boston before now?
Disobedient indentured servants, people with differing religions of ethnicities, disobedient children
Who were some of the people punished by the Puritans?
What the oddly dressed man in the crowd of spectators wants to know.
What is the identity of the father of Hester Prynne's baby?
The frequent subject of sermons and other moral lessons.
What does Hester Prynne often find herself to be?
"...going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft."
What are the things the Puritan children played at doing?
This person is reluctant to plead with Hester to name her child's father.
Who is Arthur Dimmesdale?
"But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of ____ could pity and be kind to him."
What is Nature?
Spend some time in jail, stand on the scaffold of the pillory for three hours, and wear the Scarlet Letter for the rest of her life in Boston.
What is Hester Prynne's sentence/punishment for adultery?
Boston was the scene of her crime and should be the scene of her earthly punishment, and the father of her child is there.
What are the two reasons Hester stays in Boston?
Exhibits "the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess."
Who is Pearl?
"...her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home; a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility." This passage explains why Hester had to ___ .
What is marry someone much older and deformed/marry a man she did not love?
"sad-colored garments, and gray, ...iron spikes ...darker aspect... gloomy front"
What are words that set the somber/gothic/dark tone/mood on the first page?
He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which...was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint. ... there was an air about this young minister,—an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look,...
Who is the Reverend Dimmesdale?
But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, Hester's skill was called in aid to embroider this.
What is a bridal veil?
It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a _____ child.
What is "human"?
"A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them..."
What is Chillingworth's expression when he first sees Hester on the scaffold?
The Puritans and Hawthorne obviously had very different views on what constituted this.
What is sin or crime?
He has studied alchemy and Native American medicine.
Who is Roger Chillingworth?
"In all Hester's miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense."
What is the sense Hester gets --when her letter seems to move as she looks at someone --that others have sinned, too, though they wear no letter?
First item to catch Pearl's eye.
What is The Scarlet Letter?
Chillingworth's eyes, Hester remembers, "had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the ______ _____ . "
What is "human soul."