&lt;b&gt;A Reconsideration of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter&lt;/b&gt;

Uğur Uçum

doi:10.7596/taksad.v4i3.466

Abstract

A Reconsideration of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter Abstract This paper aims at offering an in-depth analysis of both the 1926 and the 1995 movie adaptations of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter . Caught in a story of love and shame, of sin and salvation, Hester Prynne oscillates between Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale, two men too coward to bear the consequences of their actions. Why is Hester’s story still fascinating today? Will contemporary readers be willing to read the 1850 novel? Which are the main differences between the 2 movie adaptations? These are only a few of the questions this paper focuses upon.

Highlights

Being forced to work among unimaginative people, the narrator himself becomes incapable of producing any original literary piece of work and is deeply affected by their sterile perspective upon the world. He stumbles across a piece of worn and faded red cloth in the shape of the letter A
Puzzled and intrigued by the interesting embroidery, he becomes curious about the possible symbolic connotations of the letter and for a moment he “experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron” (Hawthorne, 2004, p. 50)
He feels relief because he has been haunted by the image of the scarlet letter and thought about writing its story

Summary

Introduction

Being forced to work among unimaginative people, the narrator himself becomes incapable of producing any original literary piece of work and is deeply affected by their sterile perspective upon the world. By accident, he stumbles across a piece of worn and faded red cloth in the shape of the letter A. The preface functions as a pretext for the writer to create the illusion that the story he is going to recount reflects an event belonging to a specific period in history carrying the characteristics of the respective time: The Scarlet Letter opens with an extended, semiautobiographical preface, which serves the book less as an overture than as a bridge linking the past, as portrayed in Hawthorne’s narrative, to the present and to the modern art of referential techniques associated with modern and postmodern fiction

Objectives

Conclusion