After reading The Scarlet Letter, I felt a relief that all the drama from the story was over and I didn't have to struggle more to understand Hawthorne’s text. I honestly thought that Hawthorne’s writing style can sometimes quite perplex along with high leveled vocabulary as well as the fact that it exaggerates the events being told. There are instances throughout the entire book showing his complexity, such as Dimmesdale confessing to the public near the end and obscure words like “antinomian” and “avowal.” Personally, I use the context clues to get a hint of what words and the text really mean, but I found myself looking up the terms on an occasion. Hawthorne demonstrated his fictional work in such great detail and long-winded descriptions that he can easily turn simple into complicated within a short amount of effort. Considering the fact that Hawthorne lived in a time period of flourishing Puritan society and the Romanticism era, it was understandable that Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter precisely. However, by precise, that did not mean the novel told explicitly of what happened; it gave symbols such as the Black Man and an abundance of information that drowns out a direct point. It was as if Hawthorne placed more than enough detail for his readers to comprehend the story, but that does not mean that the quantity of the text is not significant. In Hawthorne’s defense, his work of The Scarlet Letter might not have been intended for younger audiences in the modern generation where English terms such as “thou” wasn't used in everyday conversations.
Putting the difficulty of the novel comprehension, the story was fairly good. The characters and the setting were the elements that stood out the most to me. The story, in a nutshell, involved adultery and drama between affairs along with a child in a strictly disciplined society. Without the presence of the Puritan background and references to Christianity, the novel would arguably be inferior. The characters, especially Hester, Pearl, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, showed characteristics of open analysis and interpretations among the readers such as Pearl being a sin incarnation or Hester as a heroine. Some might have said that the story was a good example of the consequences of committing a sin and how it affected society and people who were directly involved. Others might have claimed that the story was too much to fully understand and therefore declaring the novel as mediocre or less. In my opinion it was their fault for not picking up on Hawthorne’s style and that they should at least try harder to know what the book was about. As for the story that showed a lesson about not to do sins, it was acceptable to consider that carrying out a crime led to undesirable consequences. However it was the historical background and characters that made the story strong. Thus, it was worth the trouble to figure out the meanings behind The Scarlet Letter and break it down into more understandable ideas and a historical perspective.
-Erica Josue
Putting the difficulty of the novel comprehension, the story was fairly good. The characters and the setting were the elements that stood out the most to me. The story, in a nutshell, involved adultery and drama between affairs along with a child in a strictly disciplined society. Without the presence of the Puritan background and references to Christianity, the novel would arguably be inferior. The characters, especially Hester, Pearl, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, showed characteristics of open analysis and interpretations among the readers such as Pearl being a sin incarnation or Hester as a heroine. Some might have said that the story was a good example of the consequences of committing a sin and how it affected society and people who were directly involved. Others might have claimed that the story was too much to fully understand and therefore declaring the novel as mediocre or less. In my opinion it was their fault for not picking up on Hawthorne’s style and that they should at least try harder to know what the book was about. As for the story that showed a lesson about not to do sins, it was acceptable to consider that carrying out a crime led to undesirable consequences. However it was the historical background and characters that made the story strong. Thus, it was worth the trouble to figure out the meanings behind The Scarlet Letter and break it down into more understandable ideas and a historical perspective.
-Erica Josue