Unregistered
05-24-2005, 06:07 PM
The Scarlet Letter was a wonderful novel. I had the chance to read<br>it over the summer for a high-school English class adn I felt it was a great<br>choice on the part of my teacher. For those of you who say it is too descriptive<br>and those parts could be cut out, I believe you are incorrect. Hawthorne describes<br>the parts of his book in such detail because he wishes to draw the reader fully <br>into the story; he wants to grasp the five senses and thrust them into the novel <br>itself. If Hawthorne chose to leave out his paragraphs of description, it would <br>make for rather bland, straightforward reading, and for those who wish to read<br>a piece with depth and interest, what kind of story would that make? Hawthorne<br>does a marvelous job of keeping the story going by limiting the number of central<br>characters, thus eliminating any stories that would take place outside of the <br>main plot, otherwise known as cutting out side-stories. The characters, on top<br>of everything else, which Hawthorne has delivered are amazing. Not allowing his<br>characters to expedite from their essential characteristics allows for a strong<br>foundation for these characters to be built on. In builiding a strong foundation <br>for his characters, Hawthorne has created the perfect way to end the story: by <br>destroying the basic truths of the characters characteristics, thus creating the <br>dramatic and romantic portions of the novel. I will not make any apologies or<br>ask for any forgiveness from those of you who see differently, but I hope that <br>you will possibly understand why your teachers have you read this book. The Scarlet<br>Letter is a classic piece of literature and deservedly so.