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.