Group+5

Prompt: Read the following passages from The Scarlet Letter. Passage 1 is from Chapter 2, “The Market-Place” (paragraph 11, “The young woman… by herself”). Passage 2 is from Chapter 3, “The Recognition” (paragraphs 1 and 2, “From this intense… his lips”). Then write a carefully reasoned and fully elaborated analysis of Hawthorne’s attitude toward these two characters. Consider allusion, irony, imagery, syntax, organization of details, and other rhetorical devices.

Within the novel, __The Scarlet Letter__, Hawthorn expresses varying attitudes towards Hester Pryne and Chillingworth. He uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, allusions, similies, and syntax to distinguish his attitudes towards the two characters. Hawthorn uses these rhetoric devices to show that his attitude towards Hester as innocent and admiring and Chillingworth as a dark and evil.


 * Passage One**

The young woman 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 lady-like, 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. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It maybe true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modeled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer, so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time, was that Scarlet Letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.


 * Passage Two**

From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his native garb, was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the English settlements, that one of them would have attracted any notice from Hester Prynne, at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian’s side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume. He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mold the physical to itself, and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne, that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom, with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did not seem to hear it. At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on Hester Prynne. It was carelessly, at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After a brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips.


 * Examples of Rhetorical devices in Passage One:**

Hawthorne creates not the image of a horrific monster of a woman standing on the scaffold, but rather, an embodiment of "perfect elegance...", with hair so shinny that "it threw off sunshine with a gleam." Rather than judge her as others do in the scene of Hester standing on the scaffold, Hawthorne expresses her outer beauty, which is in direct relation with her inner beauty.

Hawthorne also makes a celestial allusion in this scene, when he mentions how those who "expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud..." and dismayed about her pitiable situation, saw her standing with a beauty so great, that it made "a halo of [her] misfortune..." This allusion to a halo brings out a Christian reference to angels, leading the reader to perceive Hester in an angelic state; in this state, she is seen as an innocent victim to the atrocities that have bound her into her present state.


 * Examples of Rhetorical devices in Passage Two:**

Hawthorne uses similes to display the perversion of the Chillingworth. Hawthorn describes that a "writhing horror" had come upon Chillingworth's facial features "like a gliding swiftly over them." By presenting the emotional perversion of Chillingworth, and comparing them to that of a snake creeping across his face, Hawthorne shows that Chillingworth has been worn away somehow and only has the remnants of a good person. This is attitude Hawthorne takes to Chillingworth.

Hawthorne uses a syntax in the presentation of Chillingworth which is meant to emphasize the disfiguration which he was plagued with. "He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mold the physical to itself, and become manifest by unmistakable tokens." The anger which abounded itself in his mind was manifested in his disfigured appearance, for "one shoulder rose higher than the other." He uses syntax to build up his argument, first mentioning his "furrowed visage", which isn't due to age, then his "intelligence...which had so cultivated his mental part" that he was now disfigured also mentally.

Works Cited: "The Scarlet Latter by Nathaniel Hawthorne". The Literature Network. 4/28/08 <[|http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/scarletletter/>.

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