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This paper tries to make an analysis about the symbolic meanings of “A” as reflected by four main characters. It focuses on explicit meanings as well as implicit meanings. It is crucial to a better understanding of The Scarlet Letter. A more important function of this paper is to help readers recognize the real center of this work. All in all, the paper has its significance in analyzing The Scarlet Letter.
1.1 About the author--Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, in 1804 to a family with a long Puritan tradition in Salem, Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were notorious for the persecution of the Quakers and for the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692. The family fortune declined gradually. His sea-caption father died of yellow fever when he was only four years old in 1808. This left the family somewhat destitute. The family moved to Maine and his mother relied on the assistance of the relatives in rearing her four children. By his mid-teens Hawthorne read extensively and formed an ambition to be a writer himself. Hawthorne studied at Bowdoin College in Maine from 1821 to 1825. After graduating from college, he returned to Salem to live in his mother’s house and to pursue his literary career (Wu, 2013: 77-82).
In 1839, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. In order to earn some money for his marriage, Hawthorne did three things. He took a job as a surveyor at the Boston Custom House. Then he wrote children’s books to make money in 1840 and 1841. The third thing is that he invested his savings at Brook Farm, an agricultural commune set up by transcendentalists.
While working at the Custom House at Salem from 1846 to 1849, he studied his family history and became intensely sorry for the misdeeds of his Puritan ancestors. In order to expiate the sin of his ancestors, he wrote parts of his most famous novel The Scarlet Letter, which was published in 1850. It was a literary sensation and Hawthorne was proclaimed as the first American romancer.