Literary Elements

There were many good literary elements used in the Scarlet Letter. The book contains symbols, irony and forshadowing.
There were a number of symbols in SL. The first of which being the roses by the prison at the beginning of the book. The roses by the prision are something beautiful next to something ugly. The beautiful roses represent Hester, and how she doesn't belong in the prision. The next symbol of the book is the forest, which represents freedom in the sunlight and evil in the darkness. When Hester takes her cap and scarlet letter off, the sunlight breaks through the forest. An example of the forest representing evil is when Mistress Hibbins, a "witch" declares that she is meeting the "Black Man" or devil in the forest at night. The letter A on Hester's chest represents her everlasting shame for her terrible mistake. Some of the symbols differ in meaning from the perspectives of different characters. When Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl stand on the scaffold, they see a meoter in the shape of an A. Dimmesdale believes this means he should wear the scarlet letter like Hester, but the townspeople believe it symbolizes Governer Winthrop's entry to heaven.
Irony is also a key literary element in the novel. It is ironic that Dimmesdale, a priest, is Hester's lover and Pearl's father. It is also ironic that Chillingworth comes to the country pretending to be a doctor. He pretends to be helping Dimmesdale, when in reality he is hurting him.
The Scarlet Letter also contained a lot of imagery. Each chacter is described so well that you can picture them in your mind.
The Scarlet Letter is very flowy, and almost put me to sleep when I tried to read it a few times. Hawthorne uses lots of flowery language, but I didn't find it too hard to "decode."
I usualy understood what he was trying to say, but sometimes I had to read it over a few times to grasp the concept.
In my opinion, Hawthorne is a great writer. He kept the reader interested by using suspense and forshadowing. His imagery allows the reader to really picture each character. He has some blatantly obvious symbols, but also some hidden ones that have deeper meanings.