100 Books: Book 10- "The Scarlet Letter"
*currently rereading Goblet of Fire and can't be assed to read new books holy shit GoF is an enormous book I love talking to my mom about all the stupid plot holes in it, how the fuck do people spectate the goddamn second task we ask you we love Harry Potter but goddamn, Queen Rowling we think your editors were too afraid to like edit you and stuff I can't picture the book shorter because I'm too used to it like this but there must have been a way you are like a genius after all*
Rambling run-on sentences of death aside, I read The Scarlet Letter ages ago but was too congested to hold my head up for longer than a couple hours, and then it was only to aimlessly watch videos on YouTube and not string along coherent thought. Anyway, on with the show!
The Scarlet Letter is, of course, a classic of American literature, and I'm sure everyone here who has been through the American high school system has been exposed to it, at least, but I'm positive that pretty much everyone knows the deal behind this book. Maybe you know it, maybe you saw a film adaptation (I think there are a couple), maybe you saw "Easy A." (I did, but I didn't draw many parallels between it and the book besides the whole scarlet-A-for-adultery shtik and the central theme of misunderstanding and harsh judgment. "Easy A" had way more sex jokes and Emma Stone, to its credit, but The Scarlet Letter had SAT words and one of the greatest tragic heroines in literature ever, so I think the book wins.)
In any event, The Scarlet Letter, which isn't actually all that long (my edition was 180 pages), takes us back to lovely and welcoming Puritan Massachusetts, ruled by strict and unforgiving religious and moral codes. Within it is Hester Prynne, the adulteress. Pregnant without a husband, she is made to wear a fantastically bright scarlet letter A affixed to her clothing. She's an outcast, a pariah, and after her stint in prison, she is a solitary woman with a young infant attached to her along with the A. None associate with her, all reject her, and yet she refuses to reveal the identity of the father of her child, who would be punished as she was. Hester keeps her silence for reasons only she knows and attempts to move on with her life and raise her baby, a girl she names Pearl.
Hester's life revolves around the scarlet letter; most times she abhors it and all it represents, for it indicates her sin and her folly, but at other times it is her vanity. A skilled seamstress, Hester embroiders the letter with gold and fine thread and it's described to be quite impressive and eye-catching. It becomes her entire identity, even though she only committed adultery once and since then atoned significantly with the innumerable good deeds she performs for the village that so detests her, and so at times she hides behind it, while at all time it bends her into essentially a second-class citizen.
The main driving force of the plot is Hester's journey learning from the scarlet letter and from her mistake, as well as the identity and struggles of the man who fathered her child. Then Hester's husband finds her. He had sent her over from England alone, and no one in Massachusetts knows she was ever married. But he hangs around generally attempting to sabotage Hester's life and get revenge on her baby daddy (it's weird to use the phrase "baby daddy" in conjunction with this book, but honestly, a lot of it could be a fucking episode of Maury ["HER HUSBAND SENT HER TO THE NEW WORLD AND NOW SHE'S PREGNANT; BUT SHE WON'T SAY WHO THE FATHER IS!"]), and he becomes the main villain of sorts. Most of the struggles in the book, though, are people versus themselves and the pressures of society.
In fact, a lot of The Scarlet Letter revolves around putting people in boxes and expecting them to stay there, which was probably very accurate of Puritan America. Hester's a sinner, so they all put her in that box and don't expect her to ever change. But she does; she becomes as "pure" as any of her neighbors, but despite this, her neighbors mistrust her, treat her as less than them, and see her as nothing more as the letter pinned on her dress. Same thing later in the book, with Hester's co-adulterer, who she has protected for years. He's avoided the stigma of being an adulterer through Hester's loyalty, and he is regarded positively by the community. They've put him in a box as an infallible leader, but the weight of his sin is pressing on him and literally killing him. It makes him sick to know he's lying to everyone he knows, it makes him sick to see Hester stuffed away as a sinner when he knows it's just as much his fault as hers and he deserves everything she's suffered, but he's afraid and weak and human, not infallible, not a saint like all his admirers say he is, and he wants the freedom to just be human and admit he made a mistake. But again, he's afraid and Hester has accommodated him all these years; she'd never reveal him, but this secret is poisoning him slowly and he can't shake it off any longer.
It really is a beautiful book, filled with so much emotion and so much beautiful language. When I go back to school and everyone starts bitching about how they didn't get it because the language was too difficult or the phrasing was weird or it was just dumb I'm going to get so pissed off, because there's too much amazing wonderfulness in The Scarlet Letter to miss out on. I got so wrapped up in it; I read straight through lunch periods and was reading the Dramatic Conclusion in the school library. I was rocking back and forth in my chair going all "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH SNAP, LOOK AT WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW! OH SHIT SON, THIS IS SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS RIGHT NOW, OH LOOK HE'S DOING IT! OH MY GOD HE'S ACTUALLY-- HOLY SHIT!" And then the bell rang in the middle of the conclusion and I walked through the halls finishing the last couple lines, barely looking where I was going. I hope at least someone in my class got it; or better still, that my teacher can explain it so that everyone can get it and see it for the amazing work of literature it is.
I was talking about it to my mom and told her that I was considering pitching a modernized and condensed version of the events of the book to people, making it sound exciting and scandalous as all hell, until someone realized it was just The Scarlet Letter. Then I would be happy that I could make someone realize that basically every drama and soap opera in existence owes its "BUT WHO'S THE FATHER?" and other adultery-related plots to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
My one complaint? Too many goddamn fucking exclamation marks. I mean, seriously. I kept hearing everyone yelling their lines melodramatically in my head. And then when the narration started getting infested by them! Ugh I wanted to punch something. I know it was the style at the time, but it drove me bonkers. There were just too freaking many of them. Otherwise: awesome book, you need to read it at some point in your life, and that is all for tonight.
Book List
1. Wintergirls
2. Brave New World
3. I Know What You Did Last Summer
4. The Titan's Curse
5. The Battle of the Labyrinth
6. The Compound
7. The Last Olympian
8. Misery
9. 1984
10. The Scarlet Letter
~June
Rambling run-on sentences of death aside, I read The Scarlet Letter ages ago but was too congested to hold my head up for longer than a couple hours, and then it was only to aimlessly watch videos on YouTube and not string along coherent thought. Anyway, on with the show!
The Scarlet Letter is, of course, a classic of American literature, and I'm sure everyone here who has been through the American high school system has been exposed to it, at least, but I'm positive that pretty much everyone knows the deal behind this book. Maybe you know it, maybe you saw a film adaptation (I think there are a couple), maybe you saw "Easy A." (I did, but I didn't draw many parallels between it and the book besides the whole scarlet-A-for-adultery shtik and the central theme of misunderstanding and harsh judgment. "Easy A" had way more sex jokes and Emma Stone, to its credit, but The Scarlet Letter had SAT words and one of the greatest tragic heroines in literature ever, so I think the book wins.)
In any event, The Scarlet Letter, which isn't actually all that long (my edition was 180 pages), takes us back to lovely and welcoming Puritan Massachusetts, ruled by strict and unforgiving religious and moral codes. Within it is Hester Prynne, the adulteress. Pregnant without a husband, she is made to wear a fantastically bright scarlet letter A affixed to her clothing. She's an outcast, a pariah, and after her stint in prison, she is a solitary woman with a young infant attached to her along with the A. None associate with her, all reject her, and yet she refuses to reveal the identity of the father of her child, who would be punished as she was. Hester keeps her silence for reasons only she knows and attempts to move on with her life and raise her baby, a girl she names Pearl.
Hester's life revolves around the scarlet letter; most times she abhors it and all it represents, for it indicates her sin and her folly, but at other times it is her vanity. A skilled seamstress, Hester embroiders the letter with gold and fine thread and it's described to be quite impressive and eye-catching. It becomes her entire identity, even though she only committed adultery once and since then atoned significantly with the innumerable good deeds she performs for the village that so detests her, and so at times she hides behind it, while at all time it bends her into essentially a second-class citizen.
The main driving force of the plot is Hester's journey learning from the scarlet letter and from her mistake, as well as the identity and struggles of the man who fathered her child. Then Hester's husband finds her. He had sent her over from England alone, and no one in Massachusetts knows she was ever married. But he hangs around generally attempting to sabotage Hester's life and get revenge on her baby daddy (it's weird to use the phrase "baby daddy" in conjunction with this book, but honestly, a lot of it could be a fucking episode of Maury ["HER HUSBAND SENT HER TO THE NEW WORLD AND NOW SHE'S PREGNANT; BUT SHE WON'T SAY WHO THE FATHER IS!"]), and he becomes the main villain of sorts. Most of the struggles in the book, though, are people versus themselves and the pressures of society.
In fact, a lot of The Scarlet Letter revolves around putting people in boxes and expecting them to stay there, which was probably very accurate of Puritan America. Hester's a sinner, so they all put her in that box and don't expect her to ever change. But she does; she becomes as "pure" as any of her neighbors, but despite this, her neighbors mistrust her, treat her as less than them, and see her as nothing more as the letter pinned on her dress. Same thing later in the book, with Hester's co-adulterer, who she has protected for years. He's avoided the stigma of being an adulterer through Hester's loyalty, and he is regarded positively by the community. They've put him in a box as an infallible leader, but the weight of his sin is pressing on him and literally killing him. It makes him sick to know he's lying to everyone he knows, it makes him sick to see Hester stuffed away as a sinner when he knows it's just as much his fault as hers and he deserves everything she's suffered, but he's afraid and weak and human, not infallible, not a saint like all his admirers say he is, and he wants the freedom to just be human and admit he made a mistake. But again, he's afraid and Hester has accommodated him all these years; she'd never reveal him, but this secret is poisoning him slowly and he can't shake it off any longer.
It really is a beautiful book, filled with so much emotion and so much beautiful language. When I go back to school and everyone starts bitching about how they didn't get it because the language was too difficult or the phrasing was weird or it was just dumb I'm going to get so pissed off, because there's too much amazing wonderfulness in The Scarlet Letter to miss out on. I got so wrapped up in it; I read straight through lunch periods and was reading the Dramatic Conclusion in the school library. I was rocking back and forth in my chair going all "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH SNAP, LOOK AT WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW! OH SHIT SON, THIS IS SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS RIGHT NOW, OH LOOK HE'S DOING IT! OH MY GOD HE'S ACTUALLY-- HOLY SHIT!" And then the bell rang in the middle of the conclusion and I walked through the halls finishing the last couple lines, barely looking where I was going. I hope at least someone in my class got it; or better still, that my teacher can explain it so that everyone can get it and see it for the amazing work of literature it is.
I was talking about it to my mom and told her that I was considering pitching a modernized and condensed version of the events of the book to people, making it sound exciting and scandalous as all hell, until someone realized it was just The Scarlet Letter. Then I would be happy that I could make someone realize that basically every drama and soap opera in existence owes its "BUT WHO'S THE FATHER?" and other adultery-related plots to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
My one complaint? Too many goddamn fucking exclamation marks. I mean, seriously. I kept hearing everyone yelling their lines melodramatically in my head. And then when the narration started getting infested by them! Ugh I wanted to punch something. I know it was the style at the time, but it drove me bonkers. There were just too freaking many of them. Otherwise: awesome book, you need to read it at some point in your life, and that is all for tonight.
Book List
1. Wintergirls
2. Brave New World
3. I Know What You Did Last Summer
4. The Titan's Curse
5. The Battle of the Labyrinth
6. The Compound
7. The Last Olympian
8. Misery
9. 1984
10. The Scarlet Letter
~June