Written by Anon
Chapter one of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the symbol of the Prison-Door. The door is described as a “wooden edifice, the door of which [is] heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes” (Hawthorne 41).
This unholy and brooding description is a perfect symbol for the way Puritans view crime, the dreary spike studded door is similar in their views to the doors of Hell, where they wish to condemn those who have sinned. The door is also described as having lost its youth very quickly, in the description it “was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front” (41).
The prison door becoming weathered and decrepit just a couple of years of its building shows that even the door has quickly become the visible epitome of the role it plays in this Puritan society. Chapter one of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the symbol of the Prison-Door. The door is described as a “wooden edifice, the door of which [is] heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes” (Hawthorne 41).
This unholy and brooding description is a perfect symbol for the way Puritans view crime, the dreary spike studded door is similar in their views to the doors of Hell, where they wish to condemn those who have sinned.
The door is also described as having lost its youth very quickly, in the description it “was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front” (41). The prison door becoming weathered and decrepit just a couple of years of its building shows that even the door has quickly become the visible epitome of the role it plays in this Puritan society.
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