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Mar 14, 2011

Sarah rated it:

Hester walked across the room. She stepped upon her left foot, her right foot, and then her left foot again. One wonders, why doth she, in this instance of walking across the room, begin her journey upon the left foot and not the right? Could it be her terrible sin, that the devil informeth the left foot just as he informeth the left hand and those bewitched, left-handed persons amongst us? Why, forsooth, doth the left foot of sin draggeth the innocent right foot along its wretched journey from More...

21 comments like (123 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

Johntaylor1973 rated it:

I found my old high school review of this book. Here's a little bit of my assessment. Apologiese in advance:

If there is a hell, Hawthorne is the devil's sidekick, and the first thing you're given (after the stark realization that you're in hell, on fire, and this is going to last forever) is this book. And you have to do a 10 page paper praising the wondrous virtues of this massive waste of time. And after you've finished writing (in your own blood, mind you) your stupid paper, yo More...

22 comments like (80 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2011

Melissa rated it:

This was my third time reading The Scarlet Letter. The first time was during my junior year of high school. I actually enjoyed it, though literature of the nineteenth century was such a mystery to me then that I shied away from the creaky long words and felt proud of myself for succeeding in merely following the plot. When I first read it to teach it last year, I was enraptured. This year was the same. Hawthorne has such an impressive command over language. The eloquence of his language ca More...

2 comments like (17 people liked it)

Jun 30, 2008

Heather Lei rated it:

The story, not bad. The style, unreadable.

Here is who I would recommend this book to - people who like sentences with 4 or 5 thoughts, and that are paragraph length - so that they are nearly impossible to understand - because by the time the end, of the sentence, has been reached the beginning, and whatever meaning it contained, has been forgotten and the point is lost.

4 comments like (49 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2007

Katherine rated it:

Yes, yes, I know, everyone hates The Scarlet Letter.

But I've got a special fondness for it. When I was in tenth grade, our English teacher gave us a list of topics to choose from for our Scarlet Letter Essay. Discuss the changing role of women, analyze the symbolism of the forest, etc. This was the first time I'd been asked for literary criticism.

So I was flipping back through the book and writing down examples, cataloging any appearance or reference to anything supernatu More...

5 comments like (36 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Yumi rated it:

oh god.

hawthorne is that perpetually needy manchild of a writer, you know the one who peers over your shoulder while youre trying to read and keeps pointing out the parts of his own writing that he finds particularly good and/or moving.

"yeah, see? do you see? see how i talked about how the rose is red, and then i talk about how hesters 'a' is red, too? do you see what im trying to do here, with the symbolism?"

and its like that all the way through t More...

5 comments like (34 people liked it)

May 07, 2008

Werner rated it:

Actually, I've read this book twice, the first time when I was in high school. Reading it again after some thirty years, I was amazed at the amount of meaning I'd missed the first time!

Most modern readers don't realize (and certainly aren't taught in school) that Hawthorne --as his fiction, essays and journals make clear-- was a strong Christian, though he steadfastly refused to join a denomination; and here his central subject is the central subject of the Christian gospel: sin's g More...

12 comments like (26 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2010

Eddie rated it:

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A PREECHERS SPERM IT HAS UPTIGHT PEOPLE IN IT

43 comments like (23 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Cami rated it:

I am a big fan of the Neverending Book Quiz.
It was through this amusing game that I came to see that I have totally missed including one of my favorite books The Scarlet Letter in my list of the books I've read.

This book of symbols, heartache, growth and the ultimate evil adversary opened my eyes (at 16, mind you) to how amazing and multilayered good literature could be.

I'm grateful for an English teacher that unfolded the depth of this book to her students. It was More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

Petra rated it:

Awesome. I never read Hawthorne before and find his writing style a bit convoluted, with many ideas in one sentence, which slowed down my reading. However, this also improved my appreciation for the language and depth of this story.
Themes: love, hate, revenge, hidden sin, open sin, forgiveness, guilt.
Which gives the Sinner the best chances of redemption: open sin, which is publically observed and punished or hidden sin, which one keeps in one’s soul and suffers alone without any c More...

14 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 05, 2010

Rylan rated it:

Great book. Some false slandering of the Puritans.

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Faith-Anne rated it:

Heartbreaking & moving. I first read this in 11th grade & it did nothing for me. I recently reread it & found myself in love. If you don't enjoy the novel when you're young, try it again in a few years. You'll be surprised how much better the book has gotten & how much you'll grow in the process of rereading it!

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2011

Jason rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2009

Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" rated it:

Another required read that took me by surprise at how much I enjoyed it. This is a book that delves into the consequences of guilt on a person's psyche. It is very layered in that there are times where you are not sure that what happens is exactly what is perceived. No exactly surreal but written so that there is a little bit of question about supernatural things happening. Such as did Dimmesdale really have that scarlet A branded on his chest from the power of the overwhelming guilt he carried More...

7 comments like (19 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Jee rated it:

Of Fatality

To be perfectly honest, I would not have stuck with The Scarlet Letter if it is not reckoned generally to be an American classic. The action is reduced to sketches (typical chapter titles are "The Prison-Door," "The Interior of a Heart," and "Hester and the Physician"), the characters are predictable and unsympathetic, the psychology of hidden guilt is coarsened into symbolism. As for the style, the attendant on the my flight into London hit i More...

4 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2011

Pete rated it:

It's great to finally get back to the classics. It's been far too long since I read a book with careful intensity, noting throwaway lines that are likely to show up on a multiple choice or short answer test that misses the main themes of a book entirely while managing to ask lots of questions like, "In the fourth chapter, what kind of shoes was [character you don't even remember] wearing?"

I was thinking maybe it would be nice to read a book like this without worrying about More...

12 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2011

Kat rated it:

Modern society and a number of people seem somewhat confused about our ancestors. On one hand, they're dumbass peasants who attached BYOW (Bring Your Own Witch) to their barbeque invitations. On the other hand, they sometimes imbue them with super mystical intelligence, class and abilities whilst bemoaning how stupid and uncouth we have become in comparison.

The Scarlet Letter allows us to judge that the reality was somewhere in between but mostly sitting on the side of pathological More...

12 comments like (18 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2011

Ellen rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 16, 2011

Elliot rated it:

Hawthorne truly interests me. The Scarlet Letter contains two of the most tragic figures of American literature -- Arthur Dimmesdale, driven to lock himself in society's cage after a single terrible transgression; Hester Prynne, who seems to rise above the public scorn in her thoughts, yet who still remains trapped in Puritan Boston, buried next to her cowardly lover, unable to be the prophetess for a novus ordo seclorum.

It is perhaps ultimately a story of comformity, and the frustra More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 06, 2011

Chiara rated it:

“Siamo a Boston, colonia puritana, non molti anni dopo la sua fondazione. Hester Prynne, arrivata nel Nuovo Mondo prima del marito, ha una figlia fuori del matrimonio e viene condannata per adulterio a portare una A scarlatta ricamata sul petto. Nonostante l’insistenza dei magistrati, la donna rifiuta di rivelare il nome del suo amante e compagno di peccato e comincia a condurre una vita ritirata, additata dall’intera comunità come esempio di scandalo e di perdizione. Alla sua vicenda si intrecc More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Meghan rated it:

*WARNING* Do not read this book if you are looking for a quick, easy, challenge-free, light, innocent story because this is NOT the book for you. Basically, this story is the exact opposite, it is a difficult, long, detailed, dark, slightly disturbing story of adultery, forbidden love, revenge, and innocence. Honestly, even though most of my friends who have read this book hated it to it's very core, I enjoyed it. Sure, I could only read it in certain moods when I was alone and it was quiet b More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Matt rated it:

Hester Prynne tells Dimmesdale that what we did had "a consecration of its own." Dimmesdale laments his adultery but withholds his confession. He decides to escape his tormentor and Hester's unfaithful husband, Chillingworth, by going to Europe with her and their child Pearl. But he immediately comes under an even more chilling Satanic torment that arises from within. He finally tells Hester that they violated "the sanctity of each others souls" and are suffering for it. The More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Charlotte rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2008

Anjiebringhurst rated it:

Hester Prynne in 1642 sentenced in Boston to wearing a scarlet A on her dress because she's pregnant as a result of an affair; her husband who's been presumed lost at sea shows up and promises to punish the man who did it; he takes a new name, Roger Chillingworth, to aid him in his plan; Pearl, the baby, becomes unruly as she grows up and rumors fly that she's going to be taken away from Hester; Hester goes to speak to Governor Chillingworth and he says she can stay with Hester; Minister Dimmesd More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 21, 2011

RØB rated it:

THE SCARLET LETTER was one of those books I was supposed to read for college, but never actually did. I read some of it back then, but not enough to identify a passage from it on the midterm or final or whatever that was. I remember there was a passage and I said it was from Melville's story "Bartleby The Scrivener," which I also failed to read, if memory serves. Gosh, I was terrible. Well, if any of my old college (or High School) professors are out there reading this (they aren't More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2008

Ramberto rated it:

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0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2007

Jonathan rated it:

The scarlet Letter is a book that is considered to be one of the most famous books of literature. The story is not very complex but the way the story is written and its ideas that run deeper are. When reading the book, I found that it was hard to follow at times. The author, Hawthorne, would simply go on about things that had little importance to the chapter I was currently reading. I was a times discouraged by this book because it was long and it was on top of doing many assignments that More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 20, 2008

Michelle rated it:

Favorite Quotes:

"Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart." -chapter 2

"It is to the credit of human nature, that... it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility." -chapter 13

"The scarlet letter was her passport into regions w More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2008

Michele rated it:

How I got through high school and college without being required to read this book, I'm really not sure, especially as an English major growing up in the Boston area. And in spite of what I feared - because it is usually "Required Reading" - I actually enjoyed it very much!

Hawthorne's juxtaposition of the natural world of the forest and the sea with the town (Boston) and its strict and dour inhabitants gives insight not only into the time of which he writes (late 1600s) but More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 20, 2008

Misfit rated it:

Even better when it's not required reading in school. Wow, I can't even put into words how good this book was, and so much better the second time around. The classic tale of Hester Pryne, forced to wear The Scarlet Letter as a sign to all of her adultery, but she refuses to name her lover who is then forced to bear his guilt in silence.

Enough reviewers have recounted the story better than I could. Suffice it to say I loved Hawthorne's prose, it was very dense and lyrical at the same More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

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