1. “The scarlet letter” by Nathaniel hawthorne
English iii, unit 3

2. Historical significance Literary significance Theme Rhetorical feature
Make sure you still have these academic vocabulary terms with the correct definitions from unit 1 in your notebooks
Delineate
Evaluate
Premise
Purpose
Argument
Analyze
Historical significance
Literary significance
Theme
Rhetorical feature
Demonstrate
Context
counterclaim

3. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch.1)
Text (Quote)
1. Quotes include any phrase, sentence or passage from the novel. Include quotation marks, author and page number.
Select phrases that, for some reason catch your attention. These could be part of a description or a place or individual, a description of action, or an actual statement by one of the characters.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

4. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 6)
“Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.” (p. 86) Hawthorne, Nathaniel ( ). The Scarlet Letter (Kindle Locations ). . Kindle Edition.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

5. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 8)
“He looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth.” (p. 110) Hawthorne, Nathaniel ( ). The Scarlet Letter (Kindle Locations ). . Kindle Edition.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

6. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 18)
“The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast.” (p. 198) Hawthorne, Nathaniel ( ). The Scarlet Letter (Kindle Locations ). . Kindle Edition.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

7. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 18)
"Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something that she has always seen me wear!“ (p.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

8. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 18)
"Doth he love us?" said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into her mother's face. "Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together into the town?” (p. ) Hawthorne, Nathaniel ( ). The Scarlet Letter (Kindle Location 2652). . Kindle Edition.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

9. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 22)
"Mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?“ (p. 235) Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter (Kindle Location 2996). . Kindle Edition.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

10. Dialectical journal entry (The Scarlet Letter: Ch. 23)
“Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed. `Thou hast escaped me!’ he repeated more than once…” Hawthorne, Nathaniel ( ). The Scarlet Letter (Kindle Locations ). . Kindle Edition.
Response
1. Explanation: Provide any context the reader may need to understand the quote. Who is speaking? To whom? About what? What is going on? Use details. NO PERSONAL FEELINGS.
2. Reaction: What do you think or feel about what is going on? Comments? Ideas? Opinions? Questions?
3. Importance: What do these words show us? What do you learn here, or see? New insights?
4. Personal Connection: I remember…I have seen…Once, I read… You need to be very specific. Tie this personal connection back to the text.
5. Global Reflection: Look back at what you wrote for #2 and #3. What do your ideas say about society and the world? What conclusions might you draw about people and/or life? Tie your ideas back to your original thoughts.

11. Essay questions (choose two questions to answer, be sure to number them, and write a two-or-three –paragraph answer for each).
Discuss the function of physical setting in The Scarlet Letter. Describe in detail the relationship between the book’s events and the locations in which these events take place. Do things happen in the forest that could not happen in the town? What about time of day? Does night bring with it a set of rules that differs from those of the daytime?
Discuss the ways The Scarlet Letter can be seen as a feminist novel? Had Hester not been a woman, would she have received the same punishment? When Hester undertakes to protect other women from gender-based persecution, can we interpret her actions as pointing to a larger political statement in the text as a whole? Describe that larger political statement.
Describe Chillingworth’s “revenge.” Why does he choose to torture Dimmesdale and Hester when he could simply reveal that he is Hester’s husband? What does this imply about justice? About evil?
Discuss the function of the past in this novel. The narrator tells a two-hundred-year-old story that is taken from a hundred-year-old manuscript. Why does Hawthorne set the events in such distant history?
Children play a variety of roles in this novel. Pearl is both a blessing and a curse to Hester, and she seems at times to serve as Hester’s conscience. The town children, on the other hand, are cruel and brutally honest about their opinion of Hester and Pearl. Discuss why children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults. How do children differ from adults in their potential for expressing these perceptions?