Seeing Red

I must admit I cheated on reading The Scarlet Letter. By "reading" I should say digested the book, as I listened to the novel on cd's. Yep! My first ever listen to a book on "tape"! I wish I had divulged in this sooner, such as while I was in high school. Audio books have made things so much easier for multi-tasking.

Several months ago, I invested in The Scarlet Letter (paperback) while I was rummaging through a local book store's Dover Thrifts selection. I've always wanted to read it and it was only about $3.00, so I went for it. It wasn't in my queue for actual reading until this summer, but an opportunity to remake the book cover popped up so this story jumped the line. While I struggled through the first 6 chapters, I went to the library and decided to give the book on tape a try. Turns out awesome... but not so much the story.

This was a tough book to score. The writing is bad. B-A-D: bad. By this I mean the story is a classic failed attempt of "show, don't tell". There's a lot of redundancy and it is slow moving. Very happy I wasn't one to have to read this in high school. Though the symbolism and motifs are drawn out (and usually explained) over and over again, it's really hard to get past the jargon of the Puritans. If it's so awful, why is this listed as one of the greatest books of all time? The subject and message.

Hester Prynne is labeled with scarlet "A" to mark her as an adulteress. Essentially, that's most of what's happening in the book - Hester is being mocked and her bastard child is curious about the meaning of the "A". The true father of the child is being mentally tortured with guilt by himself and Hester's former husband. The Scarlet Letter in a nutshell.

What makes this book so awesome is the reflection: How does the meaning of the "A" change for Hester and her daughter? Pearl (Hester's child,) is noted as a mischievous "demon child," where as by today's standards, I thought she was just plain cute! For example, when asked if Pearl knew who her father was/where she's come from, "the child finally announced that she had not been made at all but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses, that grew by the prison door"(Hawthorne, pg. 76). When Hawthorne went into any details of events at all (I mean actually focused in on a scene,) the most interesting were those of Pearl.

There were several nice moments in this book, which is why I offer it a 3/5 Star rating. It's not an easy read to get through since it is so dry and the verbiage can be quite thick. The messages alone should be the reason for reading: Don't ride your guilt, it can run you to the ground; be yourself or we are who we are. People will eventually see past who they think you are. But also, embrace you who you are; we all grow into our identities.