The Scarlet Letter

Although the novel takes place prior to the Salem witch trials, Hawthorne references the trials in the Introduction with the assumption that readers are already familiar with them. How does knowledge of these trials color the novel’s meaning?

Compare and contrast the scene of Hester’s punishment on the scaffold with Dimmesdale’s confession and death. What do these similarities and differences reveal about the novel’s characters or themes?

Using the character arc of Hester, Dimmesdale, or Chillingworth, discuss the tension between public and private identities. How do sin and society affect that dynamic and the character’s ultimate fate?

The narrator often pauses to discuss how Salem society interprets the novel’s events. At the end of Chapter 9, for instance, he notes that “it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth” (112). What role do passages like this one play in the novel?

How does Hawthorne use physical descriptors like Chillingworth’s hunchback or Hester’s dark hair to develop his characters? How does this reflect (or complicate) the novel’s ideas about inner and outer selves?

Discuss Pearl’s role as a “messenger of anguish” (222). What function does she serve for the novel’s characters? For its readers?

How does Hester’s relationship with Dimmesdale compare to her relationship with Chillingworth? Supposing Dimmesdale had lived and fled Salem with Hester, would this be a satisfying conclusion to her story arc?

What does the narrator mean when he says he “would fain be merciful” (225) to Chillingworth and the other characters? What is the relationship between the narrator’s ideas about punishment and forgiveness and the novel itself?