Required Reading Fail: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

[insanepurin]

Comments

[lady_leia_solo]

I tried reading this book, but that introduction killed me. I felt I should read it, since I might miss something if I didn't, but I just couldn't get past it. I did like the movie though, so maybe I'll try it again someday.

[morwen_peredhil]

Sounds like it actually deserved that abysmally awful Demi Moore adaptation.

[leaf_kunoichi]

No, no book deserved that horrible adaptation.

[insanepurin]

I've heard... things about that movie. It sounds like it's its own brand of horrible. D:

[teshara]

I really wanted to like 7 Gables, but holy crap! I swear it made me go cross-eyed

[tabular_rasa]

My first attempt at reading this was when I was 11. Lololol stupid idea.

Then were required to read it in high school. I actually didn't mind Hawthorne's prose so much, but I have a high tolerance (if not a soft spot) for the verbose and overly-flowery. However, he is one hell of a Debbie Downer! "Bleak" might be a good word.

I tried to at least have some fun with the paper I had to write on it; everyone was given a symbol (red, the letter A, nature, etc) and had to write about what it meant in the context of the story. I was given "spiritual forces" so I argued that what the characters were perceiving as the divine/demonic was merely a function of their psychology, having been indoctrinated with Puritan teachings on sin, and they were unnecessarily inflicting internal ideas of morality on an amoral world-- but it turned out my teacher was quite religious and not okay with this interpretation. (But considering an abstract thing like "spiritual forces" is usually what a symbol represents rather than the symbol, I'm still at a loss as

[insanepurin]

Ouch. XD I imagine getting into it as a kid would've been impossible.

It's not that I'm against flowery/verbose writing (hell, I read H.P. Lovecraft, and Lolita is one of my all-time favorite books), but Hawthorne was too much for me to stomach. Oddly enough, I liked one short story of his... "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment." I wasn't as fond of "Young Goodman Brown" mainly because it was more rambly and the subject matter wasn't my cup of tea. But I'd much rather have YGB than The Scarlet Letter any day.

[tabular_rasa]

I kind of liked "Young Goodman Brown," but I read it along the same lines as my thesis for that Scarlet Letter paper, that it was the unattainable Puritan ideals of goodness that were the problem and not the humans who couldn't live up to them in the first place. I think it also helped Goodman Brown was so much shorter and more compact. (Well . . . compared to Scarlet Letter, lol).

[insanepurin]

"Young Goodman Brown" had more of an impact on me than The Scarlet Letter, I'll give it that. XD It also helped that it was a short story rather than a novel, so it was more straight to the point.

[polarisdib]

I actually kinda feel like the only person who does like this book (though I suppose, this being the Internet, it wouldn't take long for random other people to appear -- nevertheless, IRL, not so much). I liked the long verbose descriptions because it felt really heady -- like I was trapped in the rambling anxieties of the characters. Later on we discussed 'Romanticism' and how that's basically what it's supposed to be. I also thought the daughter, name since forgotten, was a haunting little imp straight out of a good horror story.

My teacher made this really interesting decision to follow up this book with a book by Ernest Hemingway. It was difficult switching from "the brambling woods of darkened trees through copses with shadows glittered with flashes of the gray sky bent towards the anxious darkness of ..." to "I got shot. It hurt. I was picked up. They dropped me. It hurt some more."

I didn't take the transition well and as a result it took me a very long time to appreciate Hemingway.

--PolarisDiB

[insanepurin]

I haven't thought of the prose like that before, but I guess it's because I wasn't invested in the characters enough to think of their mindsets. You mean Pearl? I personally couldn't stand her, I thought she was an obnoxious brat. XDD;;;

That must've been awkward. I don't think my high school teachers ever did anything like that.

[youjik33]

My memories of the book are kind of hazy, but I know that I kind of liked it when I was assigned it in 11th grade. I have it on my Nook now via Project Gutenberg and might give it a re-read one of these days.

Hester's daughter is named Pearl, by the way. I remember that much!

[elettaria]

I had a quick skim through to look for the slashy stuff, and it is reminding me that Pearl is a demon child, which also provides some of the novel's interest. Or am I wrong?