The Scarlet Letter: Summary
The Scarlet Letter opens in an Algonquin village, where the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and his close companion, Running Moose, have
come on a peace mission. Arthur is at home among the indigenes, but he is
special in this regard. "You're the only [white man] who comes [to us] with
open heart," says the tribal chieftain, Metacomet, who then proceeds to
list the settlers' injustices. Metacomet's remarks sound an ominous note.
It turns out that Arthur and Running Moose have a "great experiment" in
view, involving racial harmony and social diversity, but their dream is not
to be. Not yet. The time is the sixteen-seventies, when, historically, a
series of attacks by the federated local tribes ...
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comprising not only
dogmatists and invaders, but ecumenicals, free-thinkers, Quakers,
antinomians, and former members of the Merry-Mount colony. So the mood is
hopeful as the story draws to a close. The community survives, and with it,
presumably, the prospects for the great experiment. Prospectively, too, the
experiment moves outward across the continent, where the Dimmesdale family,
riding off together into the sunset, goes in search of a new life.
The Scarlet Letter is the founding classic of that American heroic
tradition. Needless to say, this does not make it a partisan tract. The
novel is no more a polemic against individualist democracy than it is a
polemic against adultery. The materials it's made of provide a full-scale
representation of the dynamics of liberal democracy, civic and
individualist principles entwined, legal obligations interlocked with
personal rights. Entwined, interlocked: The Scarlet Letter has a double
plot. It is a love-story narrated in the ...
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"The Scarlet Letter: Summary." Essayworld.com. September 25, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Scarlet-Letter-Summary/90441.
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