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Summary: "Hallelujah!" is what I said when I finished this book
Review: This novel was the most boring book I have ever read. I would never put another person through the torture of reading this long-winded dull attempt at a scandalous and exciting romance. Even though there is much symbolism to be found, when is one supposed to find it, while they are sleeping? Another factor of my displeasure with this book is that I love to read and now hesitate to pick up another Hawthorne piece. How did this book become a "CLASSIC"?
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Summary: I HATE THIS BOOK
Review: I'm sure I would be able to understand the vivid descriptions and symbolism in this book much better, if Hawthorne were not writing in some sort of moon man language. I don't know about the production of narcotics in the 1800's, but I honestly think that Hawthorne wasn't on a natural high if you know what I'm saying.
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Summary: Good book if you look into it.
Review: The Scarlet Letter is not a dull book if you get into it. It is true that it's language can be hard to read and understand at times, but that does not make it uninteresting. The main story, may not be considered exciting, but the novel is full of literary elements that make it a good book. Several faults are pointed to in this "perfect" Puritain town in which the story takes place. The book uses good elements like foreshadowing, foil characters, and a lot symbolism. A main point of the book is Hester's admiting her guilt as compared to her "lover's" hiding his guilt. I'm not going to tell you who she had the affair with, but it will be soon figuared out when you see the signs of his scarlet letter. The book may not be as exciting as some, but don't let this keep you from reading it, because it really is good.
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Summary: Ugh.
Review: I read this book for AP English and had to do a blue-book assignment of it. The word "ugh" summarizes my experience.This book was written in the 19th century, and that's where it belongs. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if someone were to modernize the language used in the book, but reading through "dost thou" after "dost thou" isn't any fun. However, I highly recommend reading Richard Armour's take on SL in his book "The Classics Reclassified".
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Summary: A novel of passionate woman caught in the middle of two men
Review: The Scarlet Letter is a novel that I enjoyed reading and gained much knowledge from. After reading this novel, I learned a lot about love and adultery and how the people in the seventeenth century responded to it and dealt with it. The story takes place in Boston where a passionate woman named Hester Prynne goes off and cheats on her husband, Roger Chillingworth. While he was in England, Hester Prynne was having an affair with the pastor of the town, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Since he is the Reverend of the community, their love was to remain a secret even though they had brought a child into the world. Because Hester Prynne had committed adultery, she was forced by the townspeople to wear an embroidered letter "A" which was patched on her clothing right over her bosom. What you will read about in this novel is how Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale live through their struggles and what their daughter Pearl had to go through during her childhood. Be aware, it's intense!
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Summary: Both forward and backward in its ideas
Review: First of all: those who found the book to be dull, such as me, listen to it on tape (it's abbreviated yet still dangerous = boring to listen to while driving, as I found out). Indeed, Hawthorne introduces some advanced ideas for the times, such as writing about a single mother, as well as musings about women's rights. His obsession with Victorian themes, such as the deification of children, fixation on bodily sins, as well as overdramatization and simplification of the plot equals predictability and annoyance to the reader. While this book could probably be considered "a classic," such as Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," both are better classified as carefully crafted literary exercises rather than engaging stories.
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Summary: This book was dumb
Review: I know that saying the book is dumb nullifies all the hard work put into it, but I just did not like it. Sure the main idea and a well written summary makes the book as a whole good, it doesn't help the actual context one bit which was very hard to follow and comprehend.
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Summary: Mundane, Tedious, Just Plain Boring
Review: With so many allusions in literature and culture to the infamous "A" worn by Hester Prynne, I was very excited about reading Hawthorne's "masterpiece." Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed. I did find the symbolism that dealt with Pearl's fascination with her mother's "A" interesting, but the rest of the book I did not. Other than to be more literaraly savvy, I would not recomend the book.
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Summary: So many better novels to be taught
Review: I can't believe this is still one of the most taught books in high schools across the U.S. With so many terrific classic novels out there by authors like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, why is there still such a focus on this rambling, over-wrought book? I think if you took out every reference to Hester Prynne's breast, and how every character, instance, woodland creature, foilage, etc....relates to it, you'd have about 100 pages of decent literature.
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Summary: THIS BOOK IS AWESOME!!
Review: Wow! This book blows me out of the water! We're reading it in Pre-Ap English and I'm absolutely LOVING all the picking apart that we're doing. What a great piece of lit! Everyone should read this book! I'm getting ready to begin writing my essay, on: "Dimmesdale as a symbol of hypocrisy".
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