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The Scarlet Letter-"The Prison Door"
79
Rhetorical Device: IMAGERY
Contrast the Prison to the Rosebush
Passage 1: Prison Imagery
What does that contrast say about Hawthorne's message?
What is the imagery saying about tone?
Imagery must be a phrase of at least 3 words
Conclusion
...the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than any thing else in the new world. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice..., was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation...in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.
Passage 2: Rosebush Imagery
But, on one side of the portal...was a wild rose-bush, covered...with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty...whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,--or whether...it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door...It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.
TPT and thesis statement
Foreboding and cautiously optimistic, Nathaniel Hawthorne in "The Prison Door" juxtaposes human frailty and redemption. The contrasting imagery constructs a society bound by punishment but with the hope of salvation.
Hawthorne matter-of-factly describes a dystopian society unable to rid itself of the plagues of sin and punishment. Even though the community is less than twenty years old, the jail is already "marked with weather stains." Anticipating human iniquity, "its beetle-browed facade and gloomy front [which] "seemed never to have known a youthful era" await those who have trespassed. Puritan society is banking on the idea that these people will sin. As a deterrent, the prison is constructed as a means, to punish, ridicule and ironically serve to oppress. Hawthorne contrasts the image of this "ugly edifice" to the " fragile beauty" of the rosebush. "Despite, Puritan attempts to suppress humanity, Hawthorne suggests that the will of the human spirit. . .