Name __________________________________ Class Period ___________________
The Scarlet Letter journal guide.
We will use this novel as our IR novel for the third and fourth nine weeks. There are
24 chapters within this novel and you will answer specific questions for those
chapters. These journals will be typed and submitted to turnitin.com or emailed at
hweis@mpasd.net to me as an attachment. Below you will find the specific due
dates for each group of journals. You can turn the journals in anytime before the
due date. This is actually encouraged.  However, if you turn your journals in late,
you will lose 10% for each day they are late. I will not accept them after the fifth day
they’re late.
Journal due dates: This schedule will not change due to snow days.
Chapter I, The Prison Door
Chapter II, The Market Place
Chapter III, The Recognition
Chapter IV, The Interview
Chapters I – IV are due on 2/15/12 by
midnight. (30 Points)
Chapter V, Hester at Her Needle
Chapter VI, Pearl
Chapter VII, The Governor’s Hall
Chapter VIII, The Elf-Child and the Minister
Chapter IX, The Leech
Chapter X, The Leech and His Patient
Chapter XI, The Interior of a Heart
Chapter XII, The Minister’s Vigil
Chapters V - VIII are due on 3/7/12
by midnight. (30 points)
Chapters IX – XII are due on 3/21/12 by
midnight. (30 points)
Chapter XIII, Another View of Hester
Chapter XIV, Hester and the Physician
Chapter XV, Hester and Pearl
Chapter XVI, A Forest Walk
Chapter XVII, The Pastor and his Parishioner
Chapter XVIII, A Flood of Sunshine
Chapter XIX, The Child at the Brookside
Chapters XIII -- XIX are due on 4/4/12 by
midnight. (50 points)
Chapter XX, The Minister in a Maze
Chapter XXI, The New England Holiday
Chapter XXII, The Procession
Chapter XXIII, The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter
Chapter XXIV, Conclusion
Final test on the novel is on 4/20/12. (100 points)
Chapters XX - XXIV are due on
4/18/12 by midnight. (50 Points)
When you type your journals, make sure you include the MLA heading at the top of
the first page, as well as the journals you are responding to.
Example:
Joe Smith
Mrs. Weis
English 11, Period 4
12 January 2012
Journals I-IV
Response length
For each response you must write a minimum of eight complete sentences. You
must include a quote from the book to reinforce what you are trying to say in each
response. If you can’t remember how to site a quote, check out
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ for help. You do not need to
write the question, but instead, practice restating it in your opening sentence.
Questions:
For chapters I-IV (Choose three questions to respond to.)
1. In your opinion, does the punishment that Hester Prynne has received fit her
crime?
2. Hester thinks of her childhood home as she stands on the scaffold. What
does this glimpse of her past suggest about her family background?
3. What clues to the identity of the stranger does Hawthorne provide in the first
three paragraphs of Chapter III?
4. How does the Reverend Mr. Wilson interpret the baby’s response to
Dimmesdale’s entreaty? What significance do you think the baby’s response
may have?
5. What reasons does Chillingworth give for not seeking vengeance against
Hester? Do you agree or disagree with his reasoning? Why?
For chapters V-VIII (Choose three questions to respond to.)
1. Is Pearl’s behavior really unnatural for a child, or does Hester just imagine
that it is? Explain.
2. How is the name of Hester’s child symbolic?
3. Look again at the passage in which Mr. Wilson asks Pearl who made her.
Interpret the significance of Pearl’s reference to the roses that bloom outside
the prison door.
4. Summarize the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale’s argument for allowing Hester to
keep Pearl.
5. At the conclusion of this “conference” on Pearl’s welfare, what is
Chillingworth’s chief interest?
For chapters IX-XII (Choose three questions to respond to.)
1. What is your opinion of Arthur Dimmesdale at this point?
2. Leech is an old word for physician, and can also mean “a bloodsucking worm
formally used by physicians in bloodletting,” and “one who clings to another
to get what he can from him.” Explain the irony involved in using this word
in the titles of Chapters IX and X.
3. How does the discovery Chillingworth makes (at the end of Chapter X)
change the relationship between the minister and him?
4. What frequent gesture of Dimmesdale’s foreshadows the presence of
something beneath his vestment? Locate a passage in the novel where the
reader can deduce what Chillingworth saw on his patient’s chest.
5. Pearl appears to know intuitively that Dimmesdale is her father when she
asks him whether he will stand with her mother and her on the scaffold in
daylight. What previous indications have there been that she feels a special
bond with the minister?
For chapters XIII-XIX (choose five questions to respond to)
1. Having now seen Hester and the minister in a more intimate setting, what is
your prediction for their success as a couple?
2. The scarlet letter had not done its office. This statement appears near the
end of chapter XIII. Review the paragraphs that precede it. What is Hester’s
state of mind? What do you think Hawthorne means by that statement?
3. Provide three examples from these chapters of Pearl’s insightful
observations or questions that indicate an awareness of the connection
between her mother and both the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and Roger
Chillingworth.
4. How is the forest with its many elements – sunlight, brook, and wind-blown
trees – symbolic of the lives of Hester and Pearl?
5. Dimmesdale says, “Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has
been none!” Explain how penance and penitence are different. What
penance has the minister undergone?
6. Chapter XVII provides readers with their first glimpse into the couple’s
perspective on their indiscretion. How do they view it after seven years?
7. Why do you think that Pearl is so upset to find that Hester has removed the
scarlet letter from her dress?
8. What effect does putting the scarlet letter back on her dress have on Hester?
For chapters XX-XXIV (choose five questions to respond to)
1. What about the novel’s conclusion was satisfying? What made you feel
unsatisfied?
2. Do you think it possible that Hester would feel a twinge of regret at the
thought of leaving the scene of her humiliation and giving up the scarlet
letter? Locate a passage from the text to support your answer.
3. What do you think Dimmesdale means when he describes his and Hester’s
actions as violating “our reverence each for the other’s soul”?
4. How do Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth fulfill the theme of
redemption?
5. No real cause of death is given for either the minister or the physician. It
would appear the driving force that gave them life no longer exists once the
secret is exposed. How does this make their deaths ironic?
6. Why, do you suppose, does Hester return to Boston?
*If you do not have computer access at home, you may use the computers in my
room before or after school, or during a study hall. Remember, that if you get a free
public library card you can use their computers to type your journals and email
them to me.