摘要：
《红字》是十九世纪美国著名的浪漫主义小说家霍桑的代表作，他常把自己的著作看作浪漫作品而不是小说。《红字》突出的艺术特色是其丰富的象征手法，因此被称为美国历史上第一部象征主义小说。作者以红字“A”为线索，通过女主人公海丝特的悲惨遭遇，深刻揭露了新英格兰时期清教殖民统治的社会现状。本问拟通过对刑台、一系列黑色意象、人物和红字“A”这几个具有象征意义的意象的分析，揭示出象征主义这一艺术特色在全书中的作用和蕴涵的深意，从而能更好的理解全书的主旨。
关键词：象征主义，刑台，清教徒，忏悔，意象，通奸罪，象征。

The Artistic Characteristic of The Scarlet Letter
——Symbolism

Thesis statement:
   Symbolism is widely used in The Scarlet Letter, especially embodied in some conspicuous images, characters and the most typical scarlet letter. It represents moral, religious, and social concepts or values in the Puritan society, and makes the novel become one of significant contributions to the growth of American fiction.

Outline:
I. Introduction
II. The scaffold is a prominent image of symbolism in the novel.
A. In the beginning, Hester Prynne is publicly condemned there.
B. In Chapter 12, Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold to confess his scandalous sin and stands with Hester and Pearl at night.
C. In the end, on the Election Day, Dimmesdale sinks onto the scaffold and dies after his confession.
III. There are a number of repeated “Black” images of symbolism in the novel.
A. The natural scenery, such as the weed, the forest, the black night and the black shadow, contrasts to the rosebush and the day, symbolizing a picture of the black society.
B. The man-made scenery, Prison Lane, symbolizes “a black flower in the civilized society.”
C. The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man”, the embodiment of evil.
IV. The characters in the novel show different kinds of symbolism.
A. Three distinguished characters embody the Puritan society.
B. Hester Prynne is a character of various symbolic meaning.
C. Pearl plays an important role of symbolism in the novel.
D. Arthur Dimmesdale symbolizes a kind of contradiction.
E. Roger Chillingworth is a symbol of real evil.
V. The meaning of the scarlet letter shifts as time passes.
A. At the very beginning, it is intended to make Hester as an adulterer.
B. In the course, it stands for “Able” or even “Angel”.
C. Eventually, the only inscription on the tombstone is an emblem of her tender mercy and kindness and an object of veneration to her.
VI. Conclusion.

The Artistic Characteristic of The Scarlet Letter
——Symbolism

Nathaniel Hawthorne is considered to be one of the greatest of American fiction writers. Hawthorne’s lifelong fascination with New England social and religious history derived in part from his own family background. He was forced by poor finances to accept a post as surveyor in the Salem Custom House, a position he lost in 1849. Troubled about money and saddened by the recent death of his mother, Hawthorne began a novel that he had brooded over for years. As a result, Hawthorne is frequently credited with portraying Puritanism in The Scarlet Letter in a remarkably authentic and convincing manner.   
Generally speaking, a symbol is anything which is used to represent something other than itself. In literature it is most often a concrete object which is used to represent something broader and more abstract-often a moral, religious, or philosophical concept or value. Symbols range from the most obvious and mechanical substitution of one thing for another, to creations as massive, complex, and perplexing as Melville’s white whale in Moby Dick.
It is in Hawthorne’s use of symbols in The Scarlet Letter that he has made one of his most distinctive and significant contributions to the growth of American fiction. Indeed, this book is usually regarded as the first symbolic novel to be written in the United States.
Hawthorne was not a realist, but a symbolic novelist. Or, to put it in his own terms, he was writing not a “novel” but a “romance”.
Hawthorne feels free to select both from the village and from the countryside which surrounds it, those details which will best help him to set the mood and convey the ideas of his “romance”. It is because they are helpful to him that he has used the scaffold, the forest, Mistress Hibbins, Governor Bellingham, the Election Sermon, the drab and solemn townspeople, and even the period itself. By allowing himself this latitude in his choice of details, he has certainly been able to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of The Scarlet Letter.
 
Firstly, the scaffold is a prominent image of symbolism in the novel. It not only is a symbol of the stern Puritan code but also becomes a symbol for the open acknowledgment of personal sin; it is the place to which Dimmesdale knows he must go for atonement, the only place where he can escape the grasp of Chillingworth, or of the devil.
In the beginning, Hester Prynne is publicly condemned there. As depicted in the book, the public gathering at the prison and at the scaffold, both of which are located in central common spaces, speak to a Puritan belief: the belief that sin not only permeates our world but that it should be actively sought out and exposed so that it can be punished publicly. Although Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, she again refuses to identify her child’s father. Indeed, she accepts her humanity rather than struggles against it.
In Chapter 12, Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold to confess his scandalous sin and stands with Hester and Pearl at night. The scaffold is an important symbol of the difference between Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s situations. It helps to establish an ironic contrast between her public torments and his inner anguish. Dimmesdale’s meeting with Hester and Pearl atop the scaffold echoes Hester’s public shaming seven years earlier. This time, however, no audience bears witness to the minister’s confession of sin. In fact, it is so dark outside that he is not even visible to Reverend Wilson when the latter walks past. However, confession at night will not suffice. He knows, and Pearl’s questions keep reminding the reader, that his symbolic acceptance of his guilt must take place in the daylight.
To faithful Puritans, signs, particularly natural ones, are of the utmost importance, and are read as symbols of divine will. A meteor traces out an “A” in the night sky. Here, as the narrator recognizes, the meteor physically and figuratively illuminates Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl, and it exposes their relationship to Chillingworth. To Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. He reads the “A” in the sky as his own, divinely sent scarlet letter. His constant burden of guilt taints and controls the way he sees the world. So, too, does the community’s reading of the “A” as standing for “Angel” testify to its mindset. The townspeople see only what they want to see, a tendency that is reaffirmed the following morning when the sexton invents a story to prevent the discovery of Dimmesdale’s glove from seeming suspicious. Just as Dimmesdale must remain an example of piety---no matter how one has to stretch the facts---so, too, must Hester remain either a scapegoat or a negative example. She is not allowed to receive forgiveness.
    Dimmesdale has a “coup” in the very end. On the Election Day, he comes to the scaffold with Hester and Pearl and declares that God has led him there. He gives the whole show away by confessing publicly on the scaffold, and dodging into death, leaving Hester dished, and Roger as it were, doubly cuckolded. It is a neat last revenge. This third and final scaffold scene serves as a catharsis, as all unsettled matters are given resolution. Pearl’s function as a symbol in this novel has been completed: “Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.”1 Chillingworth definitively loses his chance for revenge, wastes away and dies within a year of the minister’s passing, leaving a sizable inheritance to Pearl. Then, shortly after Chillingworth’s death, Hester and Pearl disappear. 
   
Secondly, there are a number of repeated “Black” images of symbolism in the novel.
The natural scenery, such as the weed, the forest, the black night and the black shadow, contrasts to the rosebush and the day, symbolizing a picture of the black society. Hawthorne points out one symbolic intention of his wild rose-bush: “It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow”.2 Night is used as a symbol for concealment, and day for exposure; The sun is also used as a symbol of untroubled, guiltless happiness, or the approval of God and nature. The sun shines on Pearl, even in the forest, and she seems to absorb and retain it; but the flees from Hester and from the mark of sin on her breast. The forest itself is symbolic in a variety of ways. As a place where witches gather, where souls are signed away to the devil, and where Dimmesdale can “yield himself with deliberate choice...to what he knew was deadly sin,”3 it is symbolic of the world of darkness and evil. As a place where Pearl can run and play freely, a friend of the animals and the wild flowers, and where even Hester can throw away her letter, let down her hair, and become a woman, it is symbolic of a natural world governed by natural laws as opposed to the artificial community with its man-made Puritan laws. As a place where darkness and gloom predominate and where one can find his way only by following a narrow, twisting path, it is symbolic of the “moral wilderness” in which Hester has been wandering. And the brook in the forest is also symbolic in various ways: first, because of its unknown source and its travels through gloom, it is suggestive of Pearl. Then, because of its mournful babble, it becomes a kind of history of sorrow, to which one more sorrowful tale is added by the events of Chapters XVI-XIX. And when Pearl refuses to cross the brook to join Hester and Dimmesdale, it becomes to the minister a boundary between two worlds. The natural setting, then, provides many of the most striking symbols in the novel. 
Several of many symbols are of the more obvious and superficial type. In the first chapter, for example, the man-made scenery, Prison Lane, symbolizes “a black flower of civilized society”; He describes the prison, using the prison building to represent the crime and the punishment which are aspects of civilized life. In the same chapter he uses the grass plot “much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple peru, and such unsightly vegetation”4 as another brief symbol of civilization corrupted by the elements which make prisons necessary.

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