even more malarkey

[I wrote the following "sample analytical essay" my senior year of high school, for the — — Journal. Rather similar to this, in certain key ways.]

The irony inherent in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, is immediately apparent when you look at the cover and see that it is scarlet, or at least some scarlet-like reddish color. The book also does indeed consist of many, many letters, although they tend to be black, rather than scarlet. In addition, each chapter, instead of identifying itself with a number (as most chapters do: "FIVE,"* for example), does so with a letter, such as "i."†

The dramatic tale begins with the letter A—a rather large letter A, at that. In fact, this letter A is three lines deep, which makes one think: "That is one large letter A." And one would not be mistaken in such an assertion, because the letter A in question is, without any doubt, almost strikingly large, resulting in a pervasive ironic sense of irony that sort of slinks through the novel pervasively. Sure enough, the scarlet letter that Hester Prynne must wear upon her bosom is a large A!

What's more, Hester likes to sew, and as everyone knows, right after "sew" comes "la," and then "tea," and that will bring us back to "doe," which is, of course, a deer (a female deer). "La" is French for "there" and also for "her," so Hawthorne is clearly emphasizing the fact that the Puritans made HER stay THERE, "there" being the place where they made her stay. Also in the major (or Ionian) scale there is the note called "ray," which is the perfect fifth of sew. As we all know, the perfect fifth is a fulfilling sound: likewise, Pearl, who chases a RAY of sun, is the fulfillment of something having to do with Hester. Hester, being mother-of-pearl, is sort of twisty and shiny and hard to look at without getting confused. Hawthorne is clearly showing the irony of Hester's plight.

Hawthorne's Ionian scale metaphor extends even further, in fact. Because of Hawthorne's title, we must be thinking about letters when we read the book, and the first letter of each chapter has been enlarged (see above). If we only look at the big letters, ignoring the little, extraneous letters, the first four chapters read as follows: "AT FA"‡. Fa, as we know, is the note right before sew and right after me. What Hawthorne is telling us is that we are all like Hester, in an ironic way.

Reading this book, we cannot help but think of Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Satan falls out of Heaven by mistake and lands in Hell, where he's ugly and then makes a castle or something. In chapter "iii," Hawthorne says, "The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions."§ First of all, the word "mien" is clearly saying that these men are mean people, which is very ironic, and Hawthorne has cleverly slipped in the word "period" to tell us that Hester is having her period. Nor is this irrelevant to the story, for we know that letters, commonly arranged as sentences, are brought to an end by periods. So Hawthorne is saying that Hester's life as a virtuous person was brought to an end when she reached puberty, a word which, of course, ends with "tea," a drink with jam and bread which brings us back to doe. In other words, puberty is always a destructive force that leads to the end note which is also the beginning of a new scale, a very ironic concept.

Hawthorne, with an ironic mustache

* Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Penguin Books, 1976) 174.

† Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960) 49.

‡ Hawthorne 49–71.

§ Hawthorne 65.