The Scarlet Letter Journal Entry
The Scarlet Letter – Journal #1 In chapters four through seven, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a plethora of rhetorical strategies to convey his purpose of emphasizing the character’s opinions and also to describe what is taking place in the particular chapter. In chapter four, there are many times when Hawthorne uses parallelism to emphasize the character’s opinions. For instance on page 51, paragraph one, Hawthorne quotes Roger Chillingworth using parallelism, “…in the eyes of men and women, -in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband, -in the eyes of yonder child!” To emphasize Roger’s opinion, Hawthorne uses the phrase, “in the eyes”, one after the other, so the reader can understand how he feels that it is an appropriate punishment for Hester to wear the ‘A’ for the whole world to see. In my opinion, I think Hester Prynne’s decision to stay in Boston even after she was free to leave, was senseless. She should have moved away from the Puritan religion because she was obviously not welcome there and her rebellious nature would soon lead to another rule being broken and the whole process of ridiculing taking place again. I do not suppose Hester was thinking about the well being of her daughter. Her depressing, dark thoughts, and sadness from being taunted by the whole town probably distracted her. Her choice to stay is like the typical, high school scene, when there is one girl who is not accepted into one clique but keeps trying to be like the girls in that clique who are constantly pushing her away. This type of girl never got anywhere by trying to be a part of the clique that she was very