Reading Questions for The Scarlet Letter
Answer the following questions as completely as possible, making sure to cite page numbers and analyzing specific quotes whenever possible.
 

“The Custom-House”

What does the narrator say about writers and authors and their relationship to their work?
 
 

What does the narrator say about his ancestors, and what seems to be his attitude towards them (proud, happy, ashamed, curious, etc)?  What does he have to say about the Puritans in general?
 
 

What does the narrator think his ancestors would say about the fact that he is a writer?
 
 

What is his attitude towards the town of Salem?  Why does he live there?
 
 

Describe the narrator's attitude towards his society:
 
 

Describe the narrator's state of mind when he starts working at the Custom-House.  What had he been doing prior to coming to work at the Custom-House, and to what does he owe his job?
 
 
 

After working at the Custom House, the narrator says he suffers from “wretched numbness”—what does he blame for this numbness and inability to write?
 
 

What does the narrator find in the Custom House?
 

What to the narrator is so significant about what moonlight does to a room?
 
 

What does the narrator try to do to combat his writer's block?
 
 

Why does the narrator lose his job at the Custom-House?
 
 

What is the setting of Chapter One?  What is the contrast that Hawthorne sets up between the prison-house and the rose bush?
 
 

What punishments do the old women recommend for Hester Prynne?
 

How does Hawthorne describe Hester Prynne?  Does she sound as evil as the old women describe her?   What does Hester have with her?  What is she wearing that is significant?
 
 

What is the color of her “A”?  What is significant about this color?
 
 

Where does Hester have to stand?  What is significant about the symbolism of where she has to stand?
 
 

Think about the description of the town: what buildings, specifically, does Hawthorne describe to us?
 
 

Chapter Three & Four

What does the mysterious stranger in the crowd learn about Hester from some of the townspeople?
 

What does Hawthorne have to say about the men who have judged Hester? Does Hawthorne think they are capable of passing judgment on her fairly?
 
 

Does Hester reveal the identity of her child’s father?  Why does the town want to know who the father is?
 
 

What do we find out about the mysterious stranger, when he goes to visit Hester in prison?  Is he angry at Hester for what she’s done?  At whom does he seem to direct his anger?
 
 

What does the mysterious stranger pledge to do?
 
 

Why does Hester swear to keep the stranger’s secret?  What is the stranger’s name?
 

Chapter 5 - 9

Where does Hester go to live?  What does the location of her house symbolize?
 
 

How will the townspeople and the ministers of the town regard her?  What does Hester symbolize for the town?
 
 

What reasons does Hawthorne offer as possibilities for why Hester doesn’t leave town?
 

How does she earn a living?  What does it mean when Hawthorne says that despite her pleasure in sewing, Hester rejected it: “like all other joys, she rejected it as sin” (76).  What does this comment say about Puritan society?
 
 

How is she treated by the people of the town?  How does Hester react to their treatment?
 
 

What do some of the townspeople believe about Hester’s scarlet letter?
 
 

What does Pearl look like?  What sort of a child is she?
 
 

How does Hester dress her child?
 

What does Hawthorne say about the Puritan children?  How do they treat Pearl?  How does Pearl react?
 
 

In Chapter 8, what does Governor Bellingham threaten to do with Pearl?
 
 

Why do the men decide that Pearl should be taken away from her mother?
 
 

Who comes to Hester’s defense?
 

What is Chillingsworth interested in finding out about Dimmesdale?
 
 

As Chillingsworth becomes closer friends with Dimmesdale, and Dimmesdale continues to look sick, what do people in the town begin to wonder about?
 
 

Chapter 10 – 12

What is Chillingsworth doing with the minister?  What is meant by the phrase “he now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold”?   Is this meant literally or symbolically?
 
 

Chillingsworth and Dimmesdale see Pearl playing outside their window one afternoon, and speculate about why she is such a wild little girl.  Chillingsworth asks “Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she affections?  Hath she any discoverable principle of being?”  Dimmesdale’s response is that Pearl knows only the “freedom of a broken law” (117).  What does he mean by that comment?
 
 

Chillingsworth asks Dimmesdale if Dimmesdale has been honest with him about his illness, telling Dimmesdale that he has a “sickness, a sore place…in your spirit” (119).  Dimmesdale won’t tell him what is wrong, saying that he won’t tell an “earthly physician.”  With whom will Dimmesdale reveal his spiritual illness?
 
 

Chillingsworth sees something on Dimmesdale’s chest while Dimmesdale is sleeping, at the end of Chapter 10.  How does Chillingsworth react to what he sees, and to whom does Hawthorne compare him?  Do we know what it is that Chillingsworth sees?  What is your hunch about what might be there?
 
 

How does Chillingsworth torment Dimmesdale?  Does Dimmesdale know what is happening to him?
 
 

How does the town regard Dimmesdale?  Is he a successful minister?  Why?
 
 

What sorts of inner conversations does Dimmesdale have with himself?  Do we know yet what it is, precisely, that he is struggling over?
 
 

Where does the minister’s “vigil” take place?  When?  What does this signify?
 
 

What does the minister feel when Hester and Pearl join him on the platform?  What do the three of them form?
 
 

How does Dimmesdale respond to Pearl’s question about whether he will hold their hands tomorrow?
 
 

What do they see in the sky while they are standing there?  How do they interpret what they see?
 
 

What does Pearl say to Chillingsworth about Dimmesdale?  Is she accurate in her assessment of Dimmesdale’s character, in your opinion?
 
 

How do others in the town choose to interpret the light in the sky?
 
 
 

Chapter 13 - 15
 

How and why has the town’s view of Hester shifted over time?  What do people start thinking that the scarlet “A” means?
 
 

How has Hester herself changed over time?
 
 

What does it mean that Hester has “cast away the fragments of a broken chain”?   Hawthorne says that Hester has “assumed a freedom of speculation” as she lives her solitary life.  Do Hester’s thoughts conform with the rest of what her Puritan society thinks?
 
 

Hawthorne comments that “the scarlet letter had not done its office.”  “Office,” in this context, means to do its duty; that the letter has not done its job.  What does he mean?  What was the letter supposed to do, and how has it failed?
 
 

Why does Hester decide to talk to Roger Chillingsworth?
 
 

When Hester talks to Chillingsworth by the seashore, what does she see when she looks at him?  How has he changed over time?
 
 

How does Chillingsworth describe his relationship with Dimmesdale?  What has Chillingsworth become to Dimmesdale—and is Dimmesdale aware of what has happened?
 
 

What is the “maze” to which Hester refers?  Does she see anyway out of it?
 
 

Why does Hester hate Chillingsworth?  What are her feelings about the memories she shares with him?
 
 

How does Pearl decorate herself, while she plays along the seashore?  What questions does she ask her mother?
 
 

Does Hester tell Pearl what the “A” means?  Why or why not?
 
 

Chapter 16 to Conclusion

What stories has Pearl heard about “The Black Man”?  What does Hester have to say about “The Black Man”?
 

Why has Hester gone into the woods?
 
 

Why does Dimmesdale say that he has a “ruined soul”?
 
 

What does Hester think that Chillingsworth has done to Dimmesdale?
 

How does Dimmesdale react to Hester’s news that Chillingsworth was her husband?  Why do they decide that what Chillingsworth has done is worse than their sin?
 
 

Why is it significant that the encounter between Hester and the minister takes place in the forest?  How does Hawthorne contrast the forest with the town?
 
 

What does Hester suggest to Dimmesdale?  How does he react?
 
 

At the beginning of Chapter 18, Hawthorne writes that “the tendency of [Hester’s] fate and fortunes had been to set her free.  The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread” (174).  What does this mean?  What has been the result of Hester’s living as an outcast for seven years?    Has the minister experienced the same freedom?
 
 

What happens when Hester takes off the scarlet letter?
 
 

How has Pearl spent her time in the woods while her mother talked to the minister?
 

Why won’t Pearl come to Hester’s side when Hester calls to her?
 

What questions does Pearl ask of the minister?  How does Hester respond to these questions?
 

What plan have Hester and Dimmesdale made? Where are they going to go?
 

What thoughts run through Dimmesdale’s mind when he returns to town after talking with Hester in the woods?  What is the significance of these thoughts?
 

As Pearl and her mother walk in town on the holiday, what comments does Pearl make about the minister?
 
 

How does Hawthorne describe the Puritans’ attitudes towards holidays and merry-making, in general?
 
 

What is significant about Hester’s comment that “we must not talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest”?
 
 

After his triumphant sermon, Dimmesdale calls out for Hester and Pearl to join him on the scaffold in front of the entire town.  Why does he do this, and why does Chillingsworth try to stop them?
 
 

What is significant about the kiss that Pearl gives to the minister as he is dying?
 
 

What do people claim to have seen on the minister’s chest before he dies?
 
 

What happens to Pearl and to Hester?
 
 

Why does Hester return to the  village?
 
 

What is on Hester’s tombstone?