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highly recommended |
Classic 
I agree with just about everything that has been said about this book. It is a classic and I love it. I'm going into 10th grade and I read it to get ahead in school. I found that once I started I could not set this book down.
wonderful book filled with insightful knowledge
In this powerful and moving piece by Hawthorne, he reveals the presence of societal pressures which affect character judgment. Set in the late 1840s and published around that time, Hawthorne's story takes place in Salem and Concord, Massachusetts. He writes in an omniscient point of view, revealing the thoughts and prejudices of each character while interjecting his opinion along with the side.
After the rather boring and tedious introduction which made me almost not want to read the book, the story opens with Hester Prynne holding an infant begat by immoral means emerging from the prison door and onto a scaffold for all to bear witness to the letter "A" for adulteress on her chest. Throughout the story, the focus will be on this symbol, and how it evolves over time with different perspectives.
I won't get into much detail as that may ruin the book for your readers, so I'll move on to Hawthorne's awesome and abundant use of imagery used as symbols for the hypocrisy of the times and so forth. With his use of imagery, he criticizes the mankind for their ignorance In addition he adds transcendentalist views into the story the show the ability of nature being able to outlast and survive over some of the whimsical presumptions of man, such as what the symbol represents.
Much of the book rely on symbols and what the characters represent. Reading and deciphering their meaning is not hard, but is not entirely obvious. What makes Hawthorne so clever is the way he shows the attributes of each character that define their symbol.
Initially, I almost gave up on the book due to the rather long and tedious introduction about the narrator of the story, but I stuck through since it was part of a reading assignment for my reading class. When I finished, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I provides an insightful view of mankind's ways and our faults. Hawthorne created a timeless masterpiece and I suggest you guys to read it.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - EBOOK
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a great American novel!
A Passionately Written Book, But It Does Happen to Bore Me 
The Scarlet Letter shows Nathaniel Hawthorne at his finest. The imagery is quite wonderful, but there's only so many times you can say the same thing. The images in this novel stretch out far longer than needed.
I nearly couldn't make it through. I do like to see every detail given it's fullest attention but even this is too much.
This book is one that is very vivid and quite pleasing to understand, but hard to read and not as easy to follow. Sometimes there's only one resourceful fact in a half a page paragraph.
Recommended.
A true classic for me
I was always skeptical when teachers used the term "classic" when referring to a book. It always seemed to me to be a term to describe books I had to read that were going to suck. The Scarlet Letter was a happy exception; one that actually has meaning today as it did when written.
I really enjoy historical fiction. Hawthorne easily puts a reader into the time period by laying out the facts of puritan life and laws, the dress of the time, as well as with the old-fashioned dialog. Hestor's husband is "away" at sea and she has become pregnant. Normally, adultery would carry a very severe punishment, but the town can't prove her husband is alive. So, she is forced to wear a scarlet "A" (for adultery) on her chest whenever she's in public. This stigma will pass on to her daughter, despite her innocence in the matter. Hestor's stoic perseverence in the face of this humiliation is even more poignant when you learn who the father of her baby really is. This tale of a town forcing its morality on a person is still valid today. Women aren't forced to wear a scarlet A (at least in the US), but we still label people who are different or don't conform to our values.
Unfortunately, at the time this was written, authors were paid by the number of pages in their books. Readers can easily guess this caused uncessary bloating in stories and this book suffers the same. There is a lot of description and fluff that I found myself skimming over, but the heart of the story is still excellent. This tale is powerful and meaningful. Highly recommended!
reviews: page 1, 2
The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is an American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered to be his magnum opus. Set in Puritan Boston in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, sin, and guilt.
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