i mostly need forest tho!
When I was in high school, we actually had to find a copy of Cliff's Notes and read the dang thing in order to cheat. These days, you just ask random people on the Internet. Some, I'm sure, that will lie to you. For example: the forest represents Hester's brother. The scaffold represents ambition. Put that on your homework and see what grade you get.
This Site Might Help You. RE: in the scarlet letter, what is the significance of the forest and the scaffold? i mostly need forest tho!
Symbols In The Scarlet Letter
The forest in the novel is a symbol of darkness and gloom where evil is. In Puritan times, the forest was the devil’s playground and no good shall come from it. “How the black man haunts the forest, and carries a book with him- a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees.” (Hawthorne 178) The witch of the town, Mistress Hibbins, knows they have been to the forest and have talked of escaping. This symbolizes the powers brought to her by the devil or “Black Man.” Not only does Mistress Hibbins know of the secret, she attends to the forest regularly, showing the powers of evil. From knowing that the forest is evil and nothing good shall come from it, Hester and Dimmesdale seem to scheme of a plan to escape the town without his redemption. The brook talked about in the novel is also symbolic in that it travels through the forest, like gloom. When Hester removes the “A” it becomes a boundary that separates the world she knows from the world without the “A.” As a symbolic setting used in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, darkness and gloom interpret the forest.
