Honors English: The Scarlet Letter

This assignment is in three parts:

• biographical research
  
• reading response questions
  
• essay
  
  
  

  Part 1: Biographical Research: Due Sept. 24

  Compose a one-page biographical blurb for the author. Imagine you are writing a bio section for the back of the book (i.e. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born...). Here are the parameters:
  

• one double spaced, one-inch margins page using either Times New Roman, Cambria, Helvetica, or Calibri in 12pt font (no header is necessary)
  
• a separate “Works Cited” page using MLA format to cite your sources (Wikipedia is not a valid source for this assignment) using the same format as above – see http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ for info on citation
  
• this page should contain information about the author’s life, accomplishments, beliefs, and anything else you find noteworthy
  
  

  Part 2: Reading Response Questions: Due Sept. 24

Answer each of the following questions as thoroughly as necessary. Some need only a minimal amount of writing while others will require deeper examination and response. Number your answers.

1. What role does shame play in the punishment of criminals? Is it as common today as it was in the time period of The Scarlet Letter? Do you think it should be? Do you think shaming criminals would lessen crime in America? What role does shame play in this novel?
   
2. What is Hester Prynne’s punishment? What are the Puritans hoping to accomplish with this sentence?
   
3. How do you feel about Hester’s punishment?
   
4. Whom does Hester recognize in the crowd as she stands on the scaffold? Why does
   this discovery both confuse and frighten her?
   
5. How does Hester live after she is released from prison? What keeps her from leaving
   Boston?
   
6. How do religious beliefs and colonial laws intermingle in this story? To what extent
   do religion and law mix in modern American society?
   
7. What effect can guilt have on a person’s life?
   
8. How does Roger Chillingworth’s appearance change? How does Hester interpret the
   changes she sees in Chillingworth?
   
9. How does Dimmesdale feel about his role as the much-respected minister in the
   community? Why doesn’t he thrive amidst these people who so admire him?
   
10. What causes Hester to decide to speak to Chillingworth after so many years? What
    does she hope to accomplish?
    
11. Hester has learned to live with the scarlet letter. Dimmesdale seems to hardly be
    able to cope. Do you agree that Dimmesdale would have been better off if Hester had
    named him as Pearl’s father seven years earlier?
    
12. Why does Hester plan to speak to Dimmesdale? What is the result of the meeting?
    
13. As a young woman, Hester did not meet her society’s expectations. How do the
    Puritan societal expectations compare and contrast with our modern day society’s
    expectations?
    
14. What happens to Chillingworth after Dimmesdale dies? Why does this happen?
    
15. The wearing of the scarlet letter was intended to isolate Hester Prynne from society
    and to call attention to her sin. Given the way in which Hester’s life ends, do you think that the scarlet letter accomplished what the magistrates intended?
    

Part 3: Essay: Due Oct. 1

You will create a Pages/Word document that follows all of the parameters from Part 1 (font, size, margins, etc.) except the length (2-3 pages). You should use an MLA style header (name, my name, class, date, title). Your essay will be a 2-3 page character analysis of any character you choose (Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Pearl, or any other). Discuss these topics:

• How does this character develop throughout the novel?
  
• What type of character is he or she (round, flat, static, foil, dynamic, etc.)?
  
• Do you sympathize with this character? Why or why not? 
  
  

Reference Material

IMPORTANT QUOTES FROM THE SCARLET LETTER
Chapter 1 Quotes On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him. Chapter 2 Quotes On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it ... was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. Chapter 3 Quotes When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips. Chapter 8 Quotes After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's questions, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door. Chapter 16 Quotes “'Mother,' said litter Pearl, 'the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.... I am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!' 'Nor ever will, my child, I hope,' said Hester. 'And why not, mother?' asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. 'Will not it come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?' Chapter 18 Quotes But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness.... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss. Chapter 22 Quotes “Mother," said [Pearl], “was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?" “Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. “We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest. Chapter 24 Quotes But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,—of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But ... the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, and yet with reverence, too.