Week four Scarlet Letter

And she was gentler here then in the grassy-margined streets or the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to know it; and one and another whispered, as she passed, "Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn yourself with me!"- and to please then, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and other twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair,and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood.

The first thing it tells you is that Pearl, the young girl talked about in this passage, is much more gentle in the forest then in the settlement or her mother's cottage. Throughout the latter part of the book, Pearl is always called the "Wild Child", impish, and is otherwise uncontrollable and impulsive in everything she does. But here, in the forest, she is calm and gentle, quiet like one of the animals that live there. The flowers speak out to her (whether literally or figuratively she hears them it doesn't say), and she wears what she finds, becoming one with the forest around her. Everything in this passage shows the readers how young Pearl, the Wild Child, more relates to the beasts and trees then the people of the settlement.

Week three The Scarlet Letter

I-the man of thought-the bookworm of great libraries-a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,-what had i to do with youth and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could i delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy!

In my opinion, this is the most important paragraph up to this point, as it both describes the "physician" (who we find out is her ex, as well as their past. The wording is a bit fancy, but it translates quite simply to this:

"I, an intelligent man, and a heavy reader in many great libraries, a man past his prime, having spent my childhood and teenage years in the pursuit of knowledge, what would I have to do with a young beauty like you? Deformed since birth, how could I pretend that my intelligence would mask my deformations in a young girl's eyes?"  -mind you, this is a rough translation-.

How to Read American Literature Like a Professor

Fog for instance. It almost always signals some sort of confusion. Dickens used a miasma, a literal and figurative fog, for the Court of Chancery, the English version of American probate court where estates are sorted out and wills contested, in Bleak House (1853). Henry Green uses heavy fog to gridlock London and strand his wealthy young travelers in a hotel in Party Going (1939). In each case the fog is mental and ethical as well as physical. In almost any case I can think of, authors use fog to suggest that people can't see clearly, that matter under consideration are murky.


More or less I agree with Foster in this matter. Since when has fog not been a symbol of confusion, or disorientation? May I also add to his point, that fog also can stand for the fear of the unknown. When a protagonist and his band walks into a thick fog, the first question you likely think is "What's hiding in there?". They will likely get lost, wander in circles, get separated, maybe even picked off when they are out of voice range? It's all confusion, the unknown or unseen. So yes I agree with Foster in this passage.