scarlet letter

The Scarlet Letter: Glossary Term Assessment
Short Entries

1. Personification: When an inanimate object is abstractly given human qualities. Example: "The soul beheld it's features in the mirror of the passing moment" (173 Top of page)

2. Rhetorical question: A question that is expected not to be answered or it has an obvious one. Example: "Is there not law for it?" (Page 45 top of page)

3. Metaphor: A comparison of objects without using like or as. Example:"... poor little Pearl was a demon offspring..." (Page 88 middle of page)

4. Exclamatory sentence: A sentence that shows surprise or sudden emotion. Example: "It was meant for a blessing-for the one blessing of her life!" (Page 101 bottom of page)

5. Interrogative sentence: A question. Example: "Wilt thou carry her a message from me?" (Page 223 middle of page)
Long Entries
1. Irony: Something that conveys a meaning that is really opposite what it should. Example: "It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony." (Page 46 bottom of page) Function: This seems to be ironic as it is rewarding Hester with being more fashionable, and looking to be above everyone else in the settlement, although it really should be a punishment to have to wear the letter A. Her punishment was a blessing in disguise this suggests.

2. Oxymoron: When contradictory terms are combined. Example: "Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not." (Page 153 bottom of page) Function: This is an oxymoron as it talks about Chillingworth making Dimmesdale "die daily a living death". It may show that Dimmesdale is reminded of the sins he's committed by Chillingworth's presence.

3. Anaphora: The repeated repetition of words or phrases. Example: "Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women-in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband-in the eyes of yonder child!" (Page 65 top of page) Function: This shows that Hester can't escape from the sins she has done, wherever she is everyone will know that she is a sinner. "In the eyes" of her people she will always be a sinner.

4. Simile: A comparison of two unlikely things using like or as. Example: "The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand." (Page 45-46) Function: The black shadow is shown here to show that the sin that Hester committed is now being punished and brought forth to her fellow Puritans.

5. Biblical allusion: An image or reference to the bible, or something that occurs in it. Example: "Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world." (Page 49 middle of page) Function: This allusion to the Virgin Mary shows that Hester was like the Virgin Mary and reminded everyone from her society of it.