Rough-Rough Draft

Kevin Gonzalez
Instructor Stacey Knapp
English 1B
May 4, 2011
Rough-Rough Draft
I am interested in taking the formalist critical perspective in my research paper. I plan on writing about the symbols that are used in the novel and how they affect the meaning of what is implied. What the letter A stands for, and how the meaning of this symbol change throughout the novel. I want to have particular focus on the concluding passage of the novel. I plan on researching how the structure of the novel adds to the tension and ambiguity of the text. I also plan on looking for paradox, and irony. Overall I plan on focusing on close reading of the text, the structure of the text, and the context in which it was written. This first rough draft is going to serve as a compilation of my ideas and interests towards the novel, and will hopefully be a good base and give birth to my further research and focus.
Roger Chillingworth is a pseudonym made up by Roger Prynne, husband to Hester Prynne, so that he may save his good name from being tarnished by the act that Hester and her lover Dimmesdale were involved in. Chillingworth is the character that suffers the most in the novel. Although Hester wears the consequences of her infidelity on her chest, and the reverend possesses his anguish internally, Roger is the character that is tormented the most by the occurrences. This tormented soul’s anguish remains ambiguous in the novel.
Chillingworth after entering the jailhouse, beseeches to Hester by offering medicine for her baby by saying, “Here, woman! The child is yours,--she is none of mine, neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father’s” (51). This sentence is a part of the first cluster of words that Roger says to Hester after their two years time spent apart. This sentence shows that Chillingworth is showing remorse maybe that the child isn’t his, and wouldn’t therefore not recognize him as a father and show affection or trust towards him.
Ambiguity is something Hawthorne uses a lot to bring interest to the text, and also meaning. This ambiguity brings about further questions for the questions you may already have, thus answering a question with a question and creating a paradox. His ambiguity also gives many possible solutions to the questions a reader may ask, which may bring about frustration and may also bring about possession of the reader’s attention or curiosity of the truth. Some of these chases of knowledge end up at a dead end, perhaps purposefully created by the author as a form of ultimate ambiguity.
The symbol of the letter A in the novel has many meanings that can be interpreted in different ways. With the line at the end of the novel “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES” (166) offering the most room for interpretation. This line translates to “On a black background, the letter A in red” (166), and is engraved on a tombstone which is mysteriously shared between buried corpses. “It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both (166).
The answer as to whose body is buried next to Hester’s is deliberately ambiguous. We are not informed if it’s the Reverend Dimmesdale’s, Hester’s sinful lover, or if it is Hester’s husband’s body. It could be that the body is Dimmesdale’s body because the narrator notes that the space between them serves the purpose of illustrating that “the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle.” Hester was married to Roger Prynne and therefore had no right to mingle with Reverend Dimmesdale, like she did, who was certainly not her husband! The space between Dimmesdale and Hester’s body could symbolize the laws of the land and give the quote a meaning that the letter A symbolizes law which prevented the love birds from being able to fly away together, leaving behind American soil. Their bodies are buried in America and remain in America because it is the American law that was established that forbid adultery.
The other possibility as to whose body is buried next to Hester’s could be that none other than her husband’s Roger Prynne. Bethany Reid notes that, “wouldn’t Puritan Boston more likely bury Hester beside the man who—in endowing her daughter—has named himself ‘husband,’ and named himself ‘Roger Prynne’?” (575). She also notes that, “Although generations of readers have assumed that she shares the A with Dimmesdale, should we assume that Puritan Boston would lay to rest even their able, angelic adulteress beside their late, beloved pastor?” (575). No doubt Puritan Boston would have had a problem laying the two sinners bodies together. The townspeople refused to believe that their beloved pastor committed the act, even after hearing his confession! Thus they showed how much influence their religious leaders had on them, and how they were so eager to blindly follow their religion to the point of condemning someone who could not have physically been able to pull off such an act as giving birth without an earthly father. They would surely be more likely to give credit to the Black Man as being the father of Pearl before their beloved Dimmesdale.
Besides this point, it would be more natural for a husband and wife to be buried next to each other. The Prynnes must have shared the tombstone right? This way, the space between them which symbolized the statement that “the two sleepers had no right to mingle” could be stating that Hester and Roger had no right to have been in a relationship together; that their marriage shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. Hester was definitely unhappily married, and Roger didn’t pull through on his promise to be loving to his wife. Thus they were not a good couple and some force must have propelled the two souls to marry if not for love. Hester may have been promised happiness from Roger before marrying, and we all know that an intellectual man with a “considerable amount of property” could have been appealing to young Hester who could have needed or yearned for stability in her life. Hester could have also been an appealing life partner for Roger Prynne, him being regretful of the time he spent as a book worm that never experienced the joy of being with a woman. Both were wrong in going into the marriage because their reasons were not for love. Thus the space between them could be seen as the lack of love one another shared.
A third possibility, greatly contributed by my imagination, is that all three bodies were buried in the burial-ground. The space between them actually being a third body whose existence was ambiguously left out. Could Hester Prynne, Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Prynne have been buried next to one another to signify how, “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES?” All three had their own part in the party. The answer might be who knows… all I know is that I yearn for the truth to be revealed, which might serve as applause for Nathaniel and his use of ambiguity in his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter.