![]() ![]() Hester is weary of the town, warning Pearl,”We must not always talk in the market place of what happens to us in the forest” (225). Therefore, they choose to live in their own world, free from the perception of the town. Their knowledge of the truth is dangerous to the townspeople. On the edge of the forest, Hester and Pearl see the town and know that they do not belong there. The trees of the forest, unlike the people in town, listen to Hester and Pearl and welcome them, sins and all. After Hesters judgement on the scaffold, she and Pearl escape there. The forest is also a location where the truth is not forbidden, but accepted. Thus, Reverend Dimmesdale is still committed to ignoring the values of truth and going along with public perception. Pearl remarks to her mother, “In the dark nighttime, he calls us to him.īut here, in the sunny day, among all the people, he knows us not, nor must we know him!” (215). All other times, the illusion is kept up and the secret hid. This is the only safe place, save the outside forest, where the truth is told and accepted. His co-sinner, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl, walk by, and the three of them stand on the scaffold together. The scaffold is where Dimmesdale first accepts his sin of adultery. all the dread of public exposure that had so long been the anguish of his life. Even though no one sees him, Dimmesdale feels ”. Troubled by his sins and his failure to confess them, the reverend ascends the pillory in the dead of night to “confess” his sins to the world. ![]() Reverend Dimmesdale has a similar experience on the scaffold. Thus, her time on the scaffold has made her see the truth of the town and its lies. She soon believes that because of her punishment on the scaffold and her perpetual reminder of it, the scarlet letter, she sees the sins of the entire towns and the hypocrisy of keeping them secret. Living on the border between the town and the forest, she learns new freedom while seeing the conformist repression of the town. The experience of the scaffold has a profound effect on Hester. The scaffold of the pillory was the point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track which she had been treading since her happy infancy” (65). The Scaffold is not only a high view point the in market place but a site where one can see beyond the restraints of town and even time. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne shows how people create their own reality with what they see. The experiences of the people on the scaffold and in the forest lend themselves to a higher issue, appearance vs. They are untainted by the views of the townspeople and can see beyond the lies and hypocrisy of the townspeople. Most settlers to the forest are people who are outsiders from society. The forest is also a setting where characters find the truth about themselves. In essence, everything that is real and true occurs on the scaffold, and everything that is illusion or hypocrisy occurs everywhere else. ![]() And whether the people are looking at them or not, they become their true self. The people standing on the scaffold experience strange phenomena while on it. ” (Hawthorne 234) where sinners are made to face the condemning public. ![]()
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