PAPER Topics

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Nathaniel Hawthorne chose the market place and the forest as settings used to symbolically develop his portrait of society and the characters in The Scarlet Letter. In this novel a story unfolds of three people who are torn apart by sin, reven ....

Middle of Term Paper
... the others. One of the most prominent structures in the market place is the scaffold. “It was in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus holding it up to public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron” (56). It was made clear that this structure was a symbol of punishment to the people, but it also came to be a symbol of sin, guilt, death, and release. How did this structure take on so many meanings throughout the book? The answer ...