What Does The Forest Symbolize In The Scarlet Letter

To a child, a forest is a place where they can explore and let their imagination run free without parental interference, but the Puritan culture of the 1600s portrayed the forest as the devils playground where people go, only to bring evil back to their supposed perfect society. Nathaniel Hawthorne displays the clash between these conflicting perspectives in his book The Scarlet Letter (1850). The story is set in seventeenth-century Boston that is surrounded by wilderness, as most American colonies were at that time. Hawthorne uses this surrounding forest as one of his contrasting devices, illuminating the conflict between Puritan ideals and human nature. The forest and the town can also be seen as a parallel to Hester and the citizens of Boston. The city’s residents use Hester as a symbol of sin and …show more content…
From the beginning of the story, the narrator seems to associate nature with more positive feelings when he says that the rosebush reminds all that "the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him". (Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter 477) This suggests that the narrator believes in the darkness of nature and the dangers that it poses. Yet, he sees hope that the forest might not be as bad of a place as most people believe. Hawthorne backs up this glimmer of hope when Hester goes to meet Dimmesdale in the forest. Here, Hester notices the way the light slips through the trees to create a glistening effect as she moves through the forest. Pearl also points out that the light does not shine on Hester because of her scarlet letter. The light was a symbol of goodness, and it shined through the thick foliage above, even so deep in the woods. Soon after that, Hester is finally able to reveal Chillingworth’s identity to Dimmesdale and warn him of Chillingworth’s intentions to seek revenge. The forest provides an atmosphere of truth and reconciliation that the town does not