American Literature books summary

That is all she knows however, and she asks earnestly why she wears the scarlet letter, and why the minister places his hand over his heart.  Ever since she was little, Pearl had a certain fascination with the letter that tortured her mother even more.  Hester decided it was better to not unburden her sin upon her child and told her daughter that it meant nothing.  After that day however, Pearl would ask her mother two or three times a day what the scarlet letter meant.

Chapter 16: : Hester learned that the Minister had gone into the woods to visit a friend who lived among the Indians.  She learned when he was expected to return, and when the day came, she and Pearl went into the forest so she could catch him on his return and speak with him in private.  As they enter the forest, Pearl says that she can stand in the sunlight, but the sunlight runs away from Hester.  In response, Hester reaches out to touch the stream of light that flocks around the little elf-child, and it vanishes when her hand comes near.  Pearl then asks her mother for a story about the black man who inhabits the forest, which she over heard a woman the previous evening talking about.  Pearl said that people went into the forest and signed the Black man’s book with their blood and that she heard the scarlet letter was the black man’s mark on her mother.  They traveled into the deep into the forest and stopped next to a little brook that Pearl began playing around.  After a while, they saw the Reverend Dimmesdale come walking slowly down the path, and Hester tells Pearl to run and play. 

Chapter 17: Hester calls out to the Minister and he instantly straightens up and looks towards her.  He finds out it is she and they inquire on how their lives have been in the last seven years.  They sit down together on a log, and ask each other if they have found peace.  The minister expresses his sadness and how he feels like a hypocrite teaching others to be holy, when he himself has a terrible hidden sin.  Hester tries to help him by talking with him and caring for him.  He thanks her for her friendship.  She then tells him of Roger Chillingsworth, how he is her husband, and out for revenge.  Dimmesdale is horrified but knew that something was wrong with Roger Chillingworth.  Hester could not take the frown that descended upon his face, and asked him if he forgave her.  He has, and she asks if he remembers what they had.  She hints that they once had a great passion and affection for each other.  Hester talks of them leaving together.  Arthur says he has not the strength to travel that far, but with Hester helping him, they thought they could do it.

Chapter 18: Together they decide to leave the New World together and not torture themselves further with their sin so that only God will judge them.  To them, they are damned already.  Hester unhooks her scarlet letter and tosses it by the bubbling brook.  They make plans together and say that they will leave for England on the ship that is in the harbor.  Talking of their love and their plans, they call back Pearl, for once happy and with lifted spirits.  Pearl is off in the forest playing and interacting with the animals.  When they call her back, Pearl comes slowly when she sees them sitting together.

 Chapter 19: They sat there looking at Pearl as she approached.  She had adorned herself with wild flowers and looked like a fairy child.  They rejoiced in their child as she came towards him, and Arthur was exceptionally afraid and anxious for the interview.  Pearl stopped at the brook and stared at them.  The child pointed at her mother with a frown.  Hester called out to her harshly to come and Pearl began screaming and throwing a tantrum.  Hester realized that the child was upset that her scarlet letter was not affixed to her mother’s breast.  She walked over to where it lay on the ground and showed it to the child.  She pinned it back into place, and Pearl was pacified and happy again.  They approached the minister and the three of them held hands, and they tried to explain to her that they were all going to be a happy family.  The minister kissed Pearl’s forehead and she ran quickly to the brook to try to wash it away.

Chapter 20: Arthur Dimmesdale walked home happily.  For the first time in seven years, there was a bounce in his step and a light in his hurting heart.  On his way, he saw some of his parishioners and he had thoughts of corruption on his mind.  He thought about the reaction he would get if he whispered corrupting things in their ears.  There are three different people he runs into in which he feels this.  He resists the temptation to do this, and wonders why he is having these thoughts.  He wonders if he signed the black man’s book in the forest with his blood.  He runs into a woman known as the town witch, and she tells him the next time he wants to go into the forest she would go with him.  When he arrives home, Mr. Chillingworth comes into his room, and the Reverend refuses to take anymore of his medicine.  He sits at his desk and reworks the sermon he had planned for the following celebration. 

Chapter 21: A public holiday because of the election was planned and everyone from that and the neighboring towns attended in their best clothing.  Hester and little Pearl attended but stayed slightly apart from the crowd.  Though everyone was packed close to see the parade, there was an empty circle around Hester because of her scarlet letter. She had gone previously to make plans with the captain of the ship that they were going to take to England, and she saw the captain of that vessel talking to Roger Chillingworth.  The captain then came over to her and informed her that the physician would be attending the voyage with them.  She looked towards him, and he smiled at her evilly.

Chapter 22: The parade began and Pearl saw the minister when he reached the front.  She asked if that was the same minister who kissed her in the woods, and Hester told her to not talk about it in the marketplace.  Mistress Hibbins approached her and began talking to Hester about the minister.  Hester denied any involvement with him, and they began watching as he preached to the people.  Pearl left her mother and wandered around.  The captain of the ship told Pearl to give her mother a message for him.  She told him that her father was the Prince of Air.  She threatened him and ran to her mother.  Hester’s mind wandered and thought about how she would soon be free of he scarlet letter and the pain associated with it.

 Chapter 23: The minister ended his incredible speech and it was one of the best of his life.  The people were inspired and as the parade turned therefor, everyone would exit.  The minister looked exceptionally sick and called to Hester and Pearl to come to him.  Roger Chillingworth ran towards and tried to get Hester back from the minister.  He is dying and with his last breaths he shouts his sin to the audience around and blesses Hester and Pearl.  He tells the people to take another better look at Hester and at himself so they see the truth in them.  He ripped off the ministerial band from his chest, and the people stood shocked.  The people are struck with awe and sympathy.  The doctor came over the minister, awestruck because he will lose him and his revenge. Dimmesdale asks Pearl for a kiss and she finally places one on his lips.  Hester kneels over him and asks him if they will not see each other again, and spend eternity together.  The reverend tells her that their sin was too large, and that is all she should be concerned.  He shouted farewell to the audience and breathed his last breath.

Chapter 24: People swore after that day that when they saw the minister rip off the band on his breast that a scarlet ‘A’ resided there.  Many thought that he made the revelation in the dying hour so everyone would know that one who appeared so pure, was as much a sinner as the rest of them. Roger Chillingworth died within the year and bequeathed large amounts of property both in New England and in England to Pearl.  This made Pearl the richest heiress in the New World.  Soon after his death, Hester Prynne and her little Pearl disappeared.  Years later Hester came back alone to live with her sin in her cottage.  Pearl was thought to be happily married elsewhere and mindful of her mother.  After her return, many people of the town went to Hester for advice and help when they were in need.  After many years she died, and was placed next to the saintly minister.  They shared a tombstone and they would be together forever.

Character Profiles

Hester Prynne: A beautiful puritan woman full of strong passions, Hester Prynne is the main character in the story.  Employed as the village seamstress, she is strong and caring, helping anyone she can when he or she are in need.  With a penitent heart, Hester travels through the story becoming only a shadow of her former passionate loving self.  Other than the scarlet letter, she was a very moral woman whose only joy in life was her daughter Pearl.  Roger Chillingsworth: The missing husband of Hester Prynne.  He shows up the day that Hester is put on public display and does not show himself as her husband.  A scholar and a man of medicine, his soul purpose in his life becomes revenge against the man who helped his wife sin.  By the end of the story, he is shown to be an evil character.

Pearl: Looked on as the devil’s child, Pearl is the only one in the story that is purely innocent.  She is passionate, intelligent, and energetic.  Pearl is in touch with nature and with her mother’s feelings.  Ever since she was born, Pearl had a fascination with the scarlet letter that is a constant reminder for Hester of her sin.

Arthur Dimmesdale: The minister of the town that the people adore, Arthur was the secret lover of Hester Prynne.  He was a sickly man who took his sin very seriously.  He spent the seven years since his indiscretion with Mistress Prynne trying to repent.  He wore down his body with his penitence and his sin ate away his soul.  In the end, he frees himself from his guilt by admitting to everyone his sin.

Metaphor Analysis

The Rose Bush: A rose bush that grew outside the prison was a symbol of survival, that there is life after the prison where Hester spent he beginning of the story.

 The Scarlet Letter ‘A’: The letter that Hester was forced to wear upon her bosom, the scarlet letter was not only a symbol of her adulterous sin, but of the women herself.  The letter masks her beauty and passion as the story goes until it is what she is known. 

The Black Man in the Woods: the peoples symbol for the devil.  The woods in those times were a very scary place, and they thought that people that went into it came out evil and corrupted.

Theme Analysis

The Scarlet Letter is a story that illustrates intricate pieces of the Puritan lifestyle.  Centered first on a sin committed by Hester Prynne and her secret lover before the story ever begins, the novel details how sin affects the lives of the people involved.  For Hester, the sin forces her into isolation from society and even from herself.  Her qualities that Hawthorne describes at the opening of the book, i.e. her beauty, womanly qualities, and passion are, after a time, eclipsed by the ‘A’ she is forced to wear.  An example of this is her hair.  Long hair is something in this time period that is a symbol of a woman.  At the beginning of the story, Hawthorne tells of Hester’s long flowing hair.  After she wears the scarlet letter for a time, he paints a picture of her with her hair out of site under a cap, and all the wanton womanliness gone from her. 

Yet, even with her true eclipsed behind the letter, of the three main characters affected, Hester has the easiest time because her sin is out in the open.  More than a tale of sin, the Scarlet Letter is also an intense love story that shows itself in the forest scene between Hester and the minister Arthur Dimmesdale.  With plans to run away with each, Arthur and Hester show that their love has surpassed distance and time away from each other.  This love also explains why Hester would not reveal the identity of her fellow sinner when asked on the scaffolding.  Roger Chillingworth is the most affected by the sin, though he was not around when the sin took place.  Demented by his thoughts of revenge and hate, Hawthorne shows Mr. Chillingworth to be a devil or as a man with an evil nature. He himself commits one of the seven deadly sins with his wrath. 

By the end of the tale that surpasses seven years, Hester is respected and revered by the community as a doer of good works, and the minister is worshipped for his service in the church.  Only Mr. Chillingworth is looked upon badly by the townspeople although no one knows why.  Through it all, Hawthorne illustrates that even sin can produce purity, and that purity came in the form of the sprightly Pearl.  Though she is isolated with her mother, Pearl finds her company and joy in the nature that surrounds her.  She alone knows that her mother must keep the scarlet letter on her at all times, and that to take it off is wrong. 

Through the book the child is also constantly asking the minister to confess his sin to the people of the town inherently knowing that it will ease his pain.  Hawthorne’s metaphor of the rose growing next to the prison is a good metaphor for Pearl’s life that began in that very place.  The reader sees this connection when Pearl tells the minister that her mother plucked her from the rose bush outside of the prison.  Finally, for all the characters, Hawthorne’s novel illustrates how one sin can escalate to encompass one’s self so that the true humans behind the sin are lost.  This is what makes Hawthorne’s novel not only a story of love vs. hate, sin vs. purity, good vs. evil, but all of these combined to make a strikingly historical tragedy as well.

Top Ten Quotes

1) «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) « ‘People say,’ said another, ‘that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to his heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation.’» 3) « ‘If thou feelest to be for thy soul’s peace, and that they earthly punishment will there by be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer.’» 4) «But she named the infant ‘Pearl,’ as being of great price- purchased with all she had- her mother’s only pleasure.» 5) «After putting her fingers in her mouth, with many ungrateful refusals to answer Mr. Wilson’s question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door» 6) « ‘He hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Mr. Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!’»  7) «Such helpfulness was found in her- so much power to do and power to sympathize- that many people refused to interpret the scarlet ‘A’ by it’s original signification.  They said that it meant ‘Able’; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a women’s strength.» 8) «‘That old man!- the physician!- the one whom they call Roger Chillingworth!-he was my husband!’»  9) «Pacify her, if thou lovest me!»  10) « ‘Hester Prynne’ cried he, with a piercing earnestness ‘in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what- for my own heavy sin and miserable agony- I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me!»

Slaughterhouse Five

Chapter One. Summary:

The narrator assures us that the book we are about to read is true, more or less. The parts dealing with World War II are most faithful to actual events. Twenty-three years have passed since the end of the war, and for much of that time the narrator has been trying to write about the bombing of Dresden. He was never able to bring make the project work. When he thinks about Dresden's place in his memory, he always recalls two things: an obscene limerick about a man whose penis has let him down, and "My Name is Yon Yonson," a song which has no ending.

Late some nights, the narrator gets drunk and begins to track down old friends with the telephone. Some years ago he tracked down Bernard O'Hare, an old war buddy of his, using Bell Atlantic phone operators. When he tracked his old friend down, he asked if Bernard would help him remember things about the war. Bernard seemed unenthusiastic. When the narrator suggests the execution of Edgar Derby, an American who stole a teapot from the ruins, as the climax of the novel, Bernard still seems unenthusiastic.

The best outline the narrator ever made for his Dresden book was on a roll of toilet paper, using crayon. Colors represented different people, and the lines crisscrossed when people met, and ended when they died. The outline ended with the exchange of prisoners who had been liberated by Americans and Russians.

After the war, the narrator went home, married, and had kids, all of whom are grown now. He studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, and in anthropology he learned that "there was absolutely no difference between anybody," and that "nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting." He's worked various jobs, and tried to keep up work on his Dresden novel all this time.

He actually did go to see Bernard O'Hare just a few weeks after finding him over the telephone. He brought his young daughters, who were sent upstairs to play with O'Hare's kids. The men could not think of any particularly good memories or stories, and the narrator noticed that Mary, Bernard's wife (to whom Slaughterhouse Five is dedicated), seemed very angry about something. Finally, she confronted him: the narrator and Bernard were just babies when they fought. Mary was angry because if the narrator wrote a book, he would make himself and Bernard tough men, glorifying war and turning scared babies into heroes. The movie adaptation would then star "Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men" (14). Wars would look good, and we would be sure to have more of them. The narrator promised that it won't be that kind of book, and that he'd call it The Children's Crusade. He and Mary were friends starting at that moment. That night, he and Bernard looked through Bernard's library for information on the real Children's Crusade, a war slightly more sordid than the other crusades. The scheme was cooked up by two monks who planned to raise an army of European children and then sell them into slavery in North Africa. Sleepless later that night, the narrator looked at a history of Dresden published in 1908. The book described a Prussian siege of the city in the eighteenth century.

In 1967, the narrator and O'Hare returned to Dresden. On the flight over, the narrator got stuck in Boston due to delays. In a hotel in Boston, he felt that someone had played with all the clocks. With every twitch of a clock, it seemed that years passed. That night, he read a book by Roethke and another book by Erika Ostrovsky. The Ostrovsky book, Cйline and His Vision, is a story of a French soldier whose skull gets cracked during World War I. He hears noises and suffers from insomnia forever afterward, and at night he writes grotesque, macabre novels. Cйline sees death and the passage of time as the same process.

The narrator also read about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the hotel room's Gideon Bible. He calls attention to the moment when Lot's wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. He loves her for that act, because it was such a human thing to do.

Now, he presents us with his war book. He will strive to look back no more. This book, he says, is a failure. It was bound to be a failure because it was written by a pillar of salt. He gives us the first line and the last, and the central story of the novel is ready to begin.

Chapter Two. Summary:

"Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." He wanders from moment to moment in his life, experiencing chronologically disparate events right after one another. He sees his birth and death and everything in between, all out of order, with no pattern to predict what will come next. Or so he believes.

Billy was born in 1922 in Ilium, New York. Tall, thin, and embarrassingly weak, he made an unlikely soldier. He was going to night school in optometry when he got drafted to fight in World War II. His father died in a hunting accident before Billy left for Europe. The Germans captured Billy during the Battle of the Bulge. In 1945 he returned to the States, finished optometry school, and married the daughter of the school's owner. During the engagement, he was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. After his release, he finished school, married the girl, got his own practice with help from his father-in-law, became quite rich, and had two kids. In 1968 he was the sole survivor of a plane crash. While he was in the hospital, his wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He returned home for rest, but without warning one day he went to New York and claimed on the radio that he had been kidnapped by aliens called Trafalmadorians. Billy's daughter, Barbara, retrieved him from New York. A month later, Billy wrote a letter to Ilium's newspaper describing the aliens. The Trafalmadorians are shaped like two-foot tall toilet plungers, suction cup down.

We now see Billy working on a second letter describing the Trafalmadorian conception of time. All time happens simultaneously, so a man who dies is actually still alive, since all moments exist at all times. Billy works on his letter, oblivious to the increasingly frantic shouts of his daughter, who has stopped by to check on him. The burden of caring for Billy has made Barbara difficult and unforgiving.

We move to the first time Billy gets unstuck in time. Billy receives minimal training as a chaplain's assistant before being shipped to Europe. He arrives in September of 1944, right in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. He never meets his chaplain or gets a proper helmet or boots. Although he survives the onslaught, he wanders behind German lines, tagging along with two scouts and an anti-tank gunner named Roland Weary. Weary repeatedly saves Billy's life, mostly by not allowing him to lie down in the snow and die. Although the scouts are experienced, Weary is as new to the war as Billy is; he just fancies himself as having more of a taste for it. By firing the anti-tank gun incorrectly, his gun crew put scorch marks into the ground. Because of those marks, the position of the gun crew was revealed to a Tiger tank that fired back. Everyone but Weary was killed. He is stupid, fat, cruel, and violent. Back in Pittsburgh he was friendless, and constantly getting ditched. His father collects torture devices. He carries a cruel trench knife, various pieces of equipment that have been issued to him, and a pornographic photo of a woman with a horse. He plagues Billy with macho, aggressive conversation. In his own mind, Weary narrates the war stories he will one day tell. Although he is almost as clumsy and slow as Billy, he imagines himself and the two scouts as fast friends. In his head he dubs them and himself the Three Musketeers, and tells himself the story of how the Three Musketeers saved the life of a dumb, incompetent college kid.

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