Huck Discussion Question: XII - XIV

1.     Huck considers borrowing and stealing the same thing because he says he would give what he takes back, if only he could, something rare. However just to solve this confusion between these two things, he says he won’t borrow anything more.

2.     Huck’s insistence on boarding the wrecked steamboat tells us that the character is looking for an adventure, the kind of deed described by Tom Sawyer in his stories.

3.     The name of the steamboat “The Walter Scott” is referred to the name of a Romantic Novel’s writer and in this situation is used as an ironic reference to the Romanticism: the boat that represent the movement sinks.

4.     Huck saves the murders because he thinks that one day he can be a murder too, and he think to the way he would like to be treated in that situation. This compassionate behavior of Huck towards the murders tells us that even though Huck wants to looks like an adventurous man, a robber and a murder without pity, he is a good and sensible boy.

5.     Huck is able to enlist the aid of the boatman acting with cunning. He notices that the boatman is very greedy so he tells the boatman that on the steamboat which is sinking there is the niece of a very wealthy man of the town.

6.     In this sentence Jim expresses that he has no more hope because or he will drown or, if he will be saved from the water, he will be sold as a slave.

7.     Huck doesn’t know a lot about dukes and kings. He probably starts their descriptions from real facts but then he adds a lot of exaggerated details. He says kings never work, only have fun time and that their power let them doing everything they want. Probably Huck adds this elements to make his stories more fascinating too.

8.     Jim doesn’t like King Salomon because he doesn’t approve his behavior. The king has a harem with a lot of wives and a lot of children and he has a big power. Jim consider the king wasteful especially after he knows the king wants to solve a debate about a baby by cutting it in a half. The king is compared with the owner of a plantation. These too have a lot of power and a lot of slaves working for them that have to respond to their orders without complaining.

Huck Discussion Questions: V – IX

1.     Pap doesn’t want Huck to receive and education and dislikes him because he is already able to read and write. What Pap says is the opposite of what a dad should say to his son, indeed Pap isn’t a good dad. The irony is the fact that Pap despises the education while he needs one too. He shouldn’t discourage Huck to study but use him as an example.

2.     The refusal of the court to grant custody of Huck to the Widow Douglas and Judge Thatcher, preferring Huck’s brute father, reflects a society based in injustice, where the owner of the power himself are not able to fulfill their offices.

3.     Huck prefers stays at the shanty because there he is free from the rules of the society. He hasn’t to behave politely and he hasn’t to care about cleaning, himself and the house. Practically when Pap isn’t there he can do everything he wants. This reflects the theme of the evasion. Huck doesn’t want to be part of the common society, he doesn’t want to be squared in a model, he wants to feel free and go looking for new adventures

4.     When Pap is drunk he shows very angry with the government. His anger is fueled at most when he listens that the government approved good measures toward slaves and black people; he looks very intolerant against blacks and slaves. The reason while Pap hates government so much is in Pap himself. He is a bad guy, who doesn’t follow the rules so it’s normal that he doesn’t like who made those rules.

5.     Huck’s escape and his consecutive meeting with Jim represent the theme of the Freedom. Once escaped form Pap, Huck is definitely free: free from the society, free from the rules. The first person he meets is Jim, another new-free-man. Jim himself escaped from his owner, the Widow. Now they can join together the beginning of their new free life.

6.     The ironic is that Huck believes that Tom is a brave boy, an expert adventurer, skillful in planning strategy, but in the reality Tom is not so capable. Tom is just a dreamer whose imagination make him create a lot of suggestive stories that appear really because they are full of details. But Tom creation aren’t more than fantasy story, they can’t be real. In the reality Tom isn’t able to do what he tells in his story. That’s why his help wouldn’t be useful to Huck, that on the opposite, is very practical.

7.     When Huck finds bread to eat he remember the Bible’s episode of the Last Dinner and links it to that. He thinks that God really can have helped him. So he restarts to think about religion and his behavior towards God.

8.     When Jim meets Huck he thinks he is a ghost and wants him to go away. This reflects the big superstition of the character who even consider dead a person alive!

9.     Running into Jim is like running into the freedom. Huck’s run is his rebirth because it defines the passage from the life in the society, under the rules, to a life completely free. The conflict in Huck’s mind is cause by the fact that Huck is helping Jim to escape. He is confused about that because on one side he wants to help the slave, but on the other he knows the slaves is ownership of the Widow Douglas, woman who Huck owes a lot to.

10. Huck could be called abolitionist because helping Jim, a slave, to escape, he goes against slavery and against the society, considering slavery is part of the society. So being consider an abolitionist isn’t a good thing.

11. Jim bases his prediction about the future on his past experience. In Jim’s prediction knowledge and superstition are mixed together and sometimes this let him to do previsions that come true.

12. In doing the trick to Jim, Huck wants just take fun of the man because he likes tricks. He doesn’t consider, strangely because generally he does, the superstitious meaning of his act. Jim, on the other side, who is very superstitious, says soon that that would have brought bad luck, indeed it is.

13. Huck’s trip to shore shows us different aspects of his personality. He looks smart and crafty, two new characteristic of the character that let him to build a good strategy, before for leaving home avoiding that the other people look for him, and then for asking information (he dresses up like a girl).

14. When Mrs. Loftus discusses the money that Tom had found, the common trait that emerges in the description is the exaggeration. The woman exaggerates the amount of money that Tom has found. This is very common in human speeches.

15. The satire is that the amount of the reward for a slave escaped, Jim in this case, is higher than the amount of the reward for a man who is accused to have done a murder, in this case Pap accused to have killed Huck.

Question about first 4 chapters of "The adventures of Huck Finn"

Discussion Questions Notice – IV

1.     The Widow Douglas is an old woman that took Huck with her like her son. She is “dismal regular and decent […] in all her ways”. She wanted Huck to be a polite person and to receive a good education. That’s why she care a lot about his behaves. She pretends Huck to be perfectly on time to dinner and accustom him to say some prays before eating. Plus she uses to teach the boy about Moses and the Bulrushers and she doesn’t want at all that Huck smokes.

In the beginning Huck is really interested in Moses stories but since he discovers that Moses is dead he loses all this curiosity about him: Huck doesn’t care about dead people, in his opinion this has no sense. This defines Huck like a person based on the practicality, a material practicality. Not being interesting about the past and the people that lived before is a bad deficit because it is possible to learn a lot from the past.

2.     The superstition is a characteristic of Huck. While he doesn’t have a good relation with God, he is very superstitious. First of all he believes in ghosts and thinks that they are souls of dead people that didn’t find the peace, so they go whispering in the night. But most of all he shows his superstition when once he was terribly mad of have killed a spider. Thinking that it was a sign of bad luck he tried different “rituals” to remove the negative influence: he stood up, turned around and crossed himself three times, then he used a piece of thread to tied a tuft of hair in a knot, believing that that kept witches away. So he believes in witches too. But in his opinion this wouldn’t help his condition because this last operation works only for people who lose horseshoe. Well summarizing Huck believes in ghosts and witches and thinks that killing a spider or losing a horseshoe is a signal of bad luck which needs a ritual to remove bad luck.

Another example of superstition is in chapter 2. Tom and Huck plays trick to Jim and he believes that the witches did it.

In other superstition can be found in the beginning of chapter 4 when Huck wants at all costs some salt to throw it backward and in then when Huck goes to Jim to listens the black man predicting his future in the bowl.

3.     After Huck knows about Heaven and Hell from Miss Watson, he whishes he will go to Hell because he wants a radical change and he doesn’t think that the Heaven is the right place were he can stay. Then he is happy knowing that probably Tom Sawyer will go to the Hell too because he want them together.

4.     Tom wants to play a trick Jim while Huck says that it is too risky because Jim can wake up. In the end Tom plays a trick to Jim by himself. The trick is pretty simple, he just gets Jim hat and hangs it on a branch over his head, while the man is sleeping in the ground. When Jim wake up and find his hat on the tree he think that the witches have done that. So telling that to the other people, he tells how the witches kidnapped him and carried him in the hell and how he survived. He described him like a sort of hero. This shows another time how the ignorance makes people believing in witches and supernatural phenomena. It is another element of superstition.

5.     With the expression “Jim was most ruined for a servant…” is expressed how Jim is silly. He thinks to be cool because the witches have kidnapped him and he has seen the witches, all superstitions and elements of ignorance.

6.     Tom leaves 5 cents on the table to pay the candles they took. Tom does this because doesn’t want to be a brute robber but a gentleman robber who respects and honor’s code and he rubbery only when he can get big treasures, not just candles like in this situation.

7.     Tom and Huck are two fluffy kids who love the adventure. They pretend to be robbers and create a secret society for robbing. They share the same boyishness. The main difference between the two guys is that Tom is very creative and full of fantasy. He set their believes on what he read in the books and imagines the reality like a fantastic story. Huck, on the opposite side is characterized by a material practicality. He doesn’t believe much in Tom stories and doesn’t believe in religion. He doesn’t think is important knowing about people form the past because they are “past”. Contrasting with this his tract is his superstition: he believes in ghost, witches and bud luck, but probably this is common for a child unaware of the life. Another tract that differentiates the two is that Tom tends always to be the boss, while Huck uses to follow Tom. Tom is more intrepid than Huck and he likes the risk.

8.     Tom thinks that is important that the gang is considered “highwaymen” because in this way their deeds will be more adventurous. Burglars just steal houses and cattle and things simple like that while they are going to robber stagecoaches and carriages on the road, kill people, and take their watches and money, everything with masks on and that is more exciting.

9.     Miss Watson tells to Huck to use to pray because praying he can have done everything he prays for. But Huck, trying and retrying, never obtains anything of what he asks in his prayers. He concludes that Miss Watson has lied him about the prayers so the religion doesn’t seems so useful to him.

10. Tom Sawyer calls Huck a “numskull” because Huck wants to face the magicians that transformed the Arabs and the elephants in a School picnic and this would be a very dangerous and imprudent action. In the reality there are no magicians and Tom makes the deed so dangerous only because wants to keep secret his lie.

11. Huck admits that Tom believed in what he said: the Arabs, the elephants, the magicians. But for Huck those seem unreal as unreal are all the things he has to study at the Sunday school, so all the things about religion and God. Here it is like the religion is compared to a lie, to a kids’ game.

12. Because, probably, he doesn’t want his father to get them or he doesn’t want seem well-off to his father now that he knows that his father is back.

Sentences

EVANESCENT: Beauty is evanescent, it's the mind to be important.

VENERATION: The veneration of gods was a common practise in Grece in the past.

Sentences

MAGNATE: Obama is an important magnate in US.

MALLEABLE: Nowadays having a malleable mind is a very important skill in work world.

Scarlet Letter 39

The meeting between Hester and Dimmesdale in chapters 16 and 17 happens in the depth of the forest. This place isn’t casual. This place evocates the ideas of secrecy and mystery. Indeed the topic of the conversation is in this way. They tell about a truth only they know and that no one else has to know. This is way the meeting happens in the wood, away from everyone, in a place apart of social and common uses. In the forest no one would judge them, plus their secret is keeping safer.

Scarlet Letter 38

"Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother. "This scarlet letter is his mark!"

For the first time Hester lies about the symbol she has on her bosom. Before she has never felt this necessity. Everyone in the city knows her story and look at her with accusatorial eyes. But Pearl is so young and so naïve. She probably can’t understand the act of the mother, his consequences and especially how it conditioned her life itself. She could try a wrong meaning and teaching from the truth so her mother prefer hides it to her.

Scarlet Letter 37

In chapter 16 Pearl tells Hester about the Black Man and the mother is surprised from this interest of her daughter. This knowledge of Pearl means that despite the child is still pure, she is attracted by the evil world. She has contact with the Black Man and the witches’ world involuntarily. Her wrong origin make her like predestined to chose wrong ways of life. But Pearl is strong and with the care of her mother and the light of God she won’t astray.

Scarlet Letter 36

"Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!"

The sunshine symbolizes the pure light of God. It is far from Hester Pryne because she is a sinner, she did a big mistake and she can’t enjoy completely God’s goodness. Opposite Pearl is only a child, she doesn’t know anything about the life, she has no fault, and she is pure so she can play with the sunshine.

As Hester, arrived under the light, tries to reach the sun with her hand, the sun goes away. It seems like if Pearl have absorbed it because despite she isn’t a common child, she still is under God’s goodness and God cares about her.

Scarlet Letter 35

When Hester, in chapter 15, asks Pearl if she knows the meaning of the symbol her mother brings on her bosom, the child for a while seems unaware of that.

"It is the great letter A. Thou hast taught me in the horn-book.”

But then a flash of cunning lights her eyes and she quickly linked the scarlet letter with the reason why the minister has his hand on the heart.

“It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!"

Pearl isn’t more a naive child. Her precocity is making her asking and starting to understand. It doesn’t miss much that she will understand the truth about the A and her origin.

Scarlet Letter 34

“A letter - the letter A - but freshly green instead of scarlet. The child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import.”

Pearl, enjoying playing with seaweeds, makes on her bosom the letter A, like her mother’s one. But the green A of Pearl is completely different from the scarlet A of Hester. Green is the color of the childhood, of the naivety while red is the color of the love, the passion love and of the fault. On the other hand Pearl, growing up, is getting more curious about the meaning of that symbol her mother has. She asks herself something before she has never thought to ask: what does the scarlet letter means?

Scarlet Letter 33

“Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he turned himself? And whither was he now going?”

The light, symbol of God and of the heaven, so the well, can’t bright over Chillingworth. He is always in the dark because he is wicked. The evil leads his mind and like a shadow darkens his soul.

Scarlet Letter 32

In chapter 15 we can understand that the real mistake of Hester wasn’t the adultery, or better, the adultery was her sin but her real mistake was to marry a man without love him. In this Chillingworth is guilty too and he should be marked with the A because he had the Avarice to persuade Hester to merry him. She was young and naïve when she did this mistake, she didn’t know what really love him and the doctor caught her life marrying her.

Scarlet Letter 31

“Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her.”

Pearl isn’t a common child. She hasn’t a common look. She hasn’t a common behavior. Differently from the other child she hasn’t any friends. Her mother would love her to play with the other children, but Pearl has an origin too particular, she is considered the symbol of the sin so no one is her friend. She has to play alone with herself, with the projection of her image in the water.

Scarlet Letter 30

The love between Hester and Dimmesdale wasn’t limited to one night of passion. They are continuing love each other. We can see how Hester still loves Dimmesdale especially in chapter 14. To help the poor man she decides to face the evil Chillingworth. She promised the doctor not to tell anyone his identity but now she is ready to goes over that promise to save the minister from the bad influence of Chillingworth. This time Hester, who uses not to have a lot of force, puts all herself in this “deed”, just for love. And in the end she succeeds to face the doctor (and then she will succeed to alert the minister).

Scarlet Letter 29

“Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself, Hester saw, or seemed to see, that there lay a responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole world besides.”

Hester is living a life completely isolated from all the society. She is like alone in her own world. That’s why she has her own rules. People labeled her like a wrong person and she will have this tag for all her life. No one care a lot about her behavior because she will be a sinner forever so Hester has to judge alone what is right and what is wrong.

Scarlet Letter 28

In the context of chapter 13 the red-passion A on the Hester bosom, the symbol of her sin change in meaning. It isn’t more the A of Adultery but people start to see it as the A of Able, the new characteristic of the poor woman that put all herself in the help of the other. After Hester admitted her fault she could redeem herself, differently Dimmesdale can’t because his is an inner sin so he is having an inner punishment that is destroying him.

Scarlet Letter 27

In chapter 13 is described Hester life for several years after she received the scarlet letter. By the time people started to pity this woman that never complain for her punishment and day-by-day live hard working and caring alone on her child. Plus Hester doesn’t limit her strengths to her own business: she helps poor people and takes care of ill people. It is for these reasons that she starts to be seen like a Saint.

Scarlet Letter 26

In the end of cheater 12 another character appears in on the scene: it’s Chillingworth. He promised to Hester that he would have discovered the truth, and he does it. He is like the sore in the situation made between the “family”. Hester hates him, Pearl hates him, and Dimmesdale hates him, but being the one with less temper, in the end choose to follow him and goes away.

Scarlet Letter 25

In chapter 12 there is one of the most important scene of the book: Dimmesdale, Pearl and Hester stand on the scaffold, hand in hand like an “electric chain”. The three elements of the sin are together on the place of the punishment. Any person sees them, but God that watch them, shows his mind in the A that appears in the sky.

Scarlet Letter 24

In chapter 12 we see the radically mutation of Dimmesdale. Since the beginning this man appear us like a Saint: he behaves good with everyone, he is pitiful and he helps people. In this chapter all his profile is changed because we discover he is the sinner that with Hester Pryne acted the sin. He isn’t a fair man, but he’s a guilty who decided not to tell the truth and that make his sin worse.  When Dimmesdale shout from the scaffold, he wanted to tell everyone his fault because he is becoming mad keeping the secret, he wanted to be free from that fault that plagues him. The fact that anyone notices him is probably a sign of the destiny: he has to live until the death with his fault on, that’s his punishment. Only Hester Pryne and Pearl, the other two symbols of the corruption, see Dimmesdale on the scaffold, and go up next to him.

Scarlet Letter 23

"Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder old black man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother or he will catch you!  But he cannot catch little Pearl!"

Pearl with infantile naivety says a real truth: the doctor has captured the minister. This capture is not practical but moral. Chillingworth succeeded to be one of the closest people to Dimmesdale and in this way he can influence his mind very easy making the priest torment himself. Plus Pearl shows a kind of craftiness that isn’t common to the children of her age.

Scarlet Letter 22

“Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom.”

The sin didn’t affect only Hester, Dimmesdale and Pearl. Roger Chillingworth undergoes it too. For all his life, when he was Mister Pryne, he was a good man, “calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man”. Now that he is Roger Chillingworth and all his life is based on the revenge, he is compared to Satan, and his evil makes him worse than the sinners themselves.

Scarlet Letter 21

"No, not to thee!  not to an earthly physician!" cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chillingworth. "Not to thee! But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit myself to the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with His good pleasure, can cure, or he can kill.

In that there are important meanings. First Dimmesdale demonstrates that he is keeping a secret and the reader can well imagine what secret is this. Second it highlighted the difference between earth and heaven, expecially between the business of the one or of the otherone. The doctros are part of the material life, they can help and cure the body of the people but they can’t cure the soul. Only God has the power to judge and cure the soul troubles.

Scarlet Letter 20

“He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.”

Chillingworth promised Hester that he would have found the other sinner, the father of the child. His researches make him think that this person can be Dimmesdale. So he approaches the minister and starts to analyze him. He completely scans the minister mind, memory-by-memory, feeling-by-feeling. In this investigation it really seems he is looking for gold, he is greed to know. But what is looking for isn’t gold. It is a fault, a terrible fault of a man and in the end he won’t receive anything good from this work.

Scarlet Letter 19

“He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself.”

Dimmesdale is the punishment of himself. Just because anyone knows his sin that doesn’t mean that he is unpunished.  Its this fact itself, that he (and Hester) is the only one to know his fault that punish it. Hester has admitted her fault, telling everyone her sin, but now she can find a little ransom. Dimmesdale, continues to “sin” carrying all his fault alone so hiding the truth, and surely he can’t find any ransom. His sin is his fault and his punishment, which is corroding him from inside.

Scarlet Letter 18

“The people knew not the power that moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness.”

Dimmesdale is a sinner, like Hester, but the behavior of the people toward them is completely different. While the people know about the fault of the woman and punish her “every day”, they don’t know about Dimmesdale fault. The minister is continued to be consider a Saint. He is admired by everyone and took like a mode. That makes Dimmesdale madder of what he really is, making the weight of his sin heavier.

17

   “He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby and other famous men, whose scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than supernatural, as having been his correspondents or associates.”

In the description of Roger Chillingworth the character is associated with Kenelm Digby, philosopher and alchemist. This linked is made to focalize on the strangeness of Chillingworth. Since his arrived in Boston this man is rounded by a mysteries atmosphere. Anyone in the city understands why after pilgrimage fro a so long time he decides to set right there. The way he conducts his work is queer too. He isn’t a common physician but he uses a lot of natural elements new for the other experts about the subject. But in the end anyone cares a lot about Chillingworth’d oddities because they need a doctor, especially sir Dimmesdale, and the man seems to be arrived in the right moment.

16

"God gave her into my keeping!" repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up! "

In this speech Hester defends her cause, the guard of her child, with a solemn tone. Here we can find two important elements. The first is the natural love that ties a mother with a daughter. Hester doesn’t like Pearl much, and sometimes she doesn’t understand her behave and disagree with her minds. But however she is her mother and, like all the mothers, she can’t imagine that her child is brought away from her. The second element is the appeal to the God’s providence. It’s God that gave her the child to punish her but at the same time, like her only joy. They can’t take away Pearl from her because they can’t go against God voluntary.

15

In chapter 8 we can notice some element that make us start to suppose a tie between Dimmesdale and the adultery. First, the vigor which with Hester asks the Minister to advocate her cause in not losing the guard of her Pearl. Second, the passion Dimmesdale put in his speech to defend Hester. Third, the strange behave Pearl has with the priest after he has succeeded to defend her and her mother: her actions show a kind of love, feeling usually stranger to her. This makes thinking to a connection between the two character.

14

When in the house of the governor Bellingham Hester mirrors in the armor in the living room what she sees is

“…wing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it.”

Hester mirrors in the armor the truth. Her image is transfigured from the A on her bosom, like her life is so doleful and hard because of her sin. The A on her sin is the only important detail of her who can be considered like her sin is the only thing the people see looking at Hester.

13

An element which focalizing on is Bellingham house, especially how difference it is from Hester Pryne’s house.

“Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times.”

The house of the governor is placed in the center of the city, in the heart of the city, in direct contact with people. Its design so elaborate doesn’t represent the essential Puritan ideology but its function is to represent the magnificent of the man that lives inside there. It is very bright, that because it is the house of a very good man, the governor, who acts for the goodness of the people who live the city, a man who should be taken as an example and who represents the justice.

This building is completely different from Hester’s house, small, dark, decadent and placed out of the city. Indeed this building symbolizes more Hester fault and couldn’t rightly be beautiful.

12

In chapter 7 we see a perfect exhibition of the strange attitude of Pearl. When she and Hester go downtown for some businesses, some children that are playing in the street start to joke them. While Hester generally endures situation like that, closing her sadness inside and showing indifferent, Pearl has to much pride and brave to do that. She starts to run against the other children shouting to them to frighten them. But the way she does that isn’t the normal way a child shows his angry. “She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence, the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment, whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation.” She seems a defender of the justice, that is very contradictory because she is the living symbol of a big “injustice”.

11

Pearl is a strange and confused creature. She is an angle and a devil at the same time. She is cute, and if someone only watches her would say that she is really a sweet child. But her behave hides something bad and wrong, probably because she was born by an Adultery. Sometimes when while she is walking with her mother, between a pirouette and another, she has fun throwing flower to the mother’s bosom, right on the scarlet letter. This act seems naive and unaware but hides a evil tendency. It seems like if the child like to admonish the mother continuously not to give her a “normal” life.

10

Pearl is another of the main character of the book. She is really presented for the first time in chapter 6. She is a complicated character and her characteristics are full of meaning. Just her name, Pearl, isn’t casual. Her mother, Hester, give her this name because the child was for her a sort of treasure, the last thing she has in the world, the only reason which she has to live for. Also this name is suited well to the characteristic of the child. Pearl isn’t a common name, it is an element of nature so it symbolizes that the child is outside of the Puritan Society and is part of a magic nature. Indeed the behave of the child, who seems like an elf, agreed with this point.

Sentences

OPAQUE: The surface of school desks is opaque.

PROPENSITY: Beyonce has been having a propensity towards singing since she was a child.