A Review of the Scarlet Letter The novel opens with an explanation of how the romance of The Scarlet Letter came to be presented as a story in its existing form. Having always wanted to be a “literary man”, Nathaniel Hawthorne talks about his three-year stint as a Surveyor in the Salem Custom House. Mostly filled with older gentlemen, the workplace was a very political, Whig-influenced environment and charged with Puritan history. After brief character …showed first 75 words of 1219 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1219 total…rips open his shirt to reveal a scarlet letter on his flesh. Dimmesdale falls to his knees and dies while on the scaffold. Hester and Pearl leave the town for awhile, and several years later Hester returns. No one hears from Pearl again, but it is assumed that she gets married and has children in Europe. Hester never removes her scarlet letter, and when she passes away she is buried in the King’s Chapel.