Name: _________________________          Date: __________ Class: _______

 

 

Chapters 5-8

Reading Check

 

1.                  What reasons does Hawthorne give for Hester’s remaining in Boston where she is an outcast?

2.                  What is one occasion for which Hester is never asked to make clothing?

3.                  What is the fist object Pearl seems to be award of as an infant?

4.                  When Governor Bellingham demands to know what Hester can teach Pearl concerning the “truths of heaven and earth,” what does Hester reply?

5.                  How can Chillingworth’s appearance changed since Hester last saw him?

6.                  How does Arthur Dimmesdale come to the aid of Hester and Pearl?

 

First Thoughts

 

7.                  Is Pearl’s behavior really unnatural for a child, or does Hester just imagine that it is? Explain.

 

Shaping Interpretations

 

8.                  How is the name of Hester’s child symbolic?

9.                  Explain how Hester’s “sympathetic knowledge of hidden sin other hearts” affects her.

10.              “But sometimes… she felt an eye—a human eye—upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give momentary relief, as if half of her agony was shared. The next instant , back it all rushed again… for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew.” In this passage, whose “human eye” does Hester feel? What is meant by Hester “had sinned anew”?

11.              How does Hawthorne characterize the disciplining of children in the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony? How do you think Pearl would have behaved if Hester had taken this disciplinary approach?

12.              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.

13.              Summarize the Reverend Dimmesdale’s argument for allowing Hester to keep Pearl.

14.              At the conclusion of this “conference” on Pearl’s welfare, what is Chillingworth’s chief interest?