The Scarlet Letter: Platform Of Sin
Beginning of paper
“This scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine . . . . The
very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance
of wood and iron” (Hawthorne 62-63). A scaffold's effect on the novel can
be seen through an examination of the first, second, and third scaffold
scenes ....
Middle of paper
.... Englanders. It is here that the
reader becomes aware of Hester being shunned as an outsider, when she is
placed on the scaffold: “Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of
wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about
the height of a mans shoulders above the street . . . . The unhappy culprit
sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a
thousand unrelenting eyes” (63-64). At the same time, the first scaffold
scene is the settin ....
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Word count: 1054
Page count: 4 (approximately 250 words per page)
