The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

9/10

I absolutely loved this book. It may even be a top-tener. Which is funny because in high school before I realized how cool books are, we had to read this book and I instantly hated it without reading it and I always convinced myself that I hated this book. I finally got myself to give it another chance and boy was I an unfair high schooler.

Hawthorne, to me, is one of the best pure writers of fiction of all time. Really. Even though this is pretty much his only acclaimed novel, he has some great short stories. He's just a guy who when I read his stuff I feel like I'm reading art, but not art for art's sake, just a guy who can tell a cool story and do it with the perfect combination of words. I even think he's a tad bit underrated even though he is well known and considered by most as a great writer. He was pretty much the first great American novelist. Americans before him still wrote about Europe and the European life. Hawthorne is all American. Many of his stories deal with the Puritans, Quakers, and early settlers of the colonies. They dealt with America. He showed that America has stories of its own.

A good one by Hawthorne in this book is that he wrote an introduction to the novel explaining where he got the idea for this book from. He says that he worked at a custom house and was cleaning out the attic when he found a cloak with the scarlet letter A on it with a note attached explaining the purpose of the cloak. He said that the book is based on this true story of a girl who had to wear this cloak for her crime of adultery. He says that he still has this cloak and anyone who wants to see it can just come by his house and he'll show them. So then people read this crazy, amazing story and buy into all sorts of things all the time wondering if this is how it happened to the lady in real life. Turns out, however, that he just made that up. He never found any such cloak. Ha ha. Burn by Hawthorne. I think it was a pretty good ploy because everyone always likes a true story or a story that could have perhaps been true. Kinda like how in Fargo they say it's a true story at the start but it's not. The book is still good enough that it doesn't need a fake story to fool people into its believability. There's some high drama and some sweet plot twisters, as well as some compassionate feelings for poor Hester. She turns out to be quite the strong and brave woman. Great stuff. But don't take my word for it, take this guy named Arnold Bennett who says that The Scarlet Letter is "the one American literary work which comes as near to perfection as is granted to man to bring his achievements."

To quote two quotes:

"Loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin."

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."