Home > The Scarlet Letter Summary & Study Guide > The Scarlet Letter Group > Discussion Board

What is a good, exciting synopsis of The Scarlet Letter, exciting enough to appeal to readers and making them want to read it.

javiloks,

Try it as an old-style newspaper alert.

EXTRA!!!!!  EXTRA!!!!!        READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!

ADULTERY!!!!!!    SIN!!!!!!!!    DECEPTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Puritanical Press, 1625)--"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a fascinating and mysterious account of a one, Hester Prynne, wearer of the scarlet "A", sewn by her own hand as punishment for the crime of adultery in Massachusetts.

Hester's husband has been missing and presumed dead, but she's conceived a child by another man. She refuses to name the man responsible and carries the burden of their sin.

For years, Hester is shunned by the community, although they seek her out for her work as a seamstress. She lives alone on the edge of the village with her strange child, Pearl. She meekly endures the stares of the villagers until she becomes something that legends are made of.

In the meantime, she shares the secrets of two men. One slowly killing himself with guilt, the other bent on revenge.

FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT BY READING THE STORY!!!!!!

WILL SHE CONFESS HER SINS? WLLL WE FIND OUT THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE FATHER? WHO IS HE? ONLY THE READER KNOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

" A forbidden romance....

a scorned man.....

a marked woman....

an unbelievable truth"

The Scarlet Letter: Are YOU ready to find out?

Have you ever done something that you hoped no one would ever find out about, something that could lead to your personal and professional destruction ... and then found out that someone did ... only to find out that this one person's greatest desire in life was to DESTROY YOU!  Would you own up to what you did?  Would you attempt to destroy him?  Would you run?

Pick up The Scarlet Letter and watch the town's respected minister deal with just this problem.

Who would you lie for?

Whose secrets would you keep?

Is love worth ruining a career and a lifetime of beliefs?

With a scarlet letter "A" for Adultry emblazoned on her chest and her fatherless child by her side, Hester Prynne holds the secrets of this religion-based town's most influential people.

Infamy of adultery. Shame of the outcast. Hester and her baby wear the shame of betrayal even as the two men who betrayed them plot secretly to undo each other and themselves. Will Hester survive her shame? Will her child find happiness and love? Which man wil triumph in the end? And will Hester's inflamed heart have enough warmth left in it to care?

One of the most damning conditions of the "human condition" is that were forever exposed.  Our very first ancestors found this out only after paradise was lost.  Yet it is the never ending quest to recover this paradise that gives meaning to what would otherwise be vexingly puzzling: life.  In this quest we are continuously tempted; sometimes we give in to temptation as a challenge to ourselves: can we get away with it.  Then the torment of our own shame takes away the attraction that the temptation originally had.  The anguish comes from knowing that nothin remains forever hidden under the sun, and that whether or  not we are exposed is a question of luck, really.  Deep inside, though, we long to resolve the issue.  And then we long to face the only one who can give us deliverance, the only one who can reopen Eden for us.  And is that not one of the reasons why we give in to temptation, to come to that intimate encounter, vulnerable and naked?