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Essay / Chapter Analysis Scarlet Letter - 1260
Summary—Chapter I: The Prison GateThis first chapter contains little action, instead setting the scene and introducing the first of many symbols that will eventually dominate the story. A crowd of dark and gloomy people gathered at the gate of a prison in 17th-century Boston. The building's heavy oak door is studded with iron spikes, and the prison appears to have been built to hold dangerous criminals. However optimistic the founders of new colonies may be, the narrator tells us, they invariably plan for a prison and cemetery almost immediately. This is the case of the citizens of Boston, who built their prison around twenty years earlier. The only incongruity in this otherwise dull scene is the rose bush growing next to the prison door. The narrator suggests that it recalls the kindness of nature towards the condemned; for his account, he says, will bring either a “sweet moral flowering” or some relief from unrelenting gloom and doom. an infant, walks out of the prison gate and towards a scaffold (a raised platform), where she is to be publicly condemned. The women in the crowd make disparaging comments about Hester; they particularly criticize him for the richness of the embroidered badge on his chest: a letter “A” sewn in gold and scarlet. From the women's conversation and Hester's memories as she walks through the crowd, we can infer that she committed adultery and gave birth to an illegitimate child, and that the "A" on her dress means “Adultery”. The beadle calls Hester. Children taunt her and adults stare at her. Scenes from Hester's previous life flash through her mind: she sees her parents standing outside their house in the English countryside, then she sees a "deformed" scholar, much older than herself, whom she married and which she followed to continental Europe. But now the present invades her and she inadvertently hugs the baby, making him cry. She views her current fate with disbelief.Analysis – Chapters I and IIThese chapters introduce the reader to Hester Prynne and begin to explore the theme of sin, as well as its connection to knowledge and social order. The use of symbols in the chapters, as well as their depiction of the political reality of Hester Prynne's world, speaks to the contradictions inherent in Puritan society..