Difficulty 2

In my quest to continue to understand what The Scarlet Letter means, I find myself running into alot more question marks than I orinally anticipated. The first part that I really didn't understand was why the people started to see Chillingsworth as evil. It is said "... [Dimmsdale] was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingsworth"(86). It wasn't really until the in class discussion that I understand why the people ever thought that Chillingsworth was a bad person. That part confused me because in the beginning of the chapter they like him. The people were first saying " ..that Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air, and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study!"(81). In this case of figuring out what was going on, the only thing I could do was to keep reading. As I read into the next chapter it became more clear why they called him evil. In my opinion the author was just foreshadowing what was to come. Sure enough, later on in the chapter when Hester talks with Chillingsworth the evil about him comes out again. "In a word, old Roger Chillingsworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office"(110). At that point in the story, Hester went to tell Chillingsworth that she is going to let Dimmesdale know who he really is. I guess the only diffuculty I have is understanding why she didn't just go tell Dimmesdale first. When Hester actually does go and tell Dimmesdale in the woods, I don't really get who Dimmesdale is more angry with, Hester or Chillingsworth. "The minister looked at her, for an instant, with all that violence of passion....the portion of him which the Devil claimed...Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered"(125). When I read that I couldn't really determine who he was angry with but putting myself in his position, it would be both

Difficulty 1

In the story The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the old English language is in abundance. That being said the only difficulty I have had so far is with the language. There is not one single word that I am having difficulty with, but many. The only tool that I have to use is context clues, which has been pretty good to me so far. The very beginning of The Scarlett Letter seemed to be really confusing to me. I couldn't tell if Hester Prynne was a witch or just what the people considered to be a whore back then. It wasn't until I read that they weren't going to hang her that I realized that she was just a whore. I imagine that because they talked about how her husband was an important man and had to stay behind for business before coming to America, that she got bored and found another man. She ended up having a baby without knowing who the father is. Today not knowing who the father is is not a good thing. Back then not knowing who the father is must have been really frowned upon to say the least. Context clues is pretty much the only thing that's getting me through this story, because it certainly isn't the storyline. I would've never got that she noticed the guy dressed as a Native American was her husband unless I had gone back and reread the entire page that it was mentioned on. I did have trouble though figuring out whether he is trying to help out Hester Prynne or if he is disgusted with her. The old English language again comes to play because to me it sounds as if he is being sarcastic in his tone but the words he is using sounds as if he is pretty serious. The only thing I know for sure is that he vows to find out who she messed around with and who is the father of her child. I'm pretty sure he is upset with her and wants to harm her but again the old English makes it hard for me to understand.