Scarlet Letter Journal (1)

The founders of a new colony have two immediate necessities for the new land-- a cemetery and a prison. Though the prison was already "gloomy", the "weather stains" and "rust" on the door's iron spikes "darkened" the structure even more; it was as if the prison had "never known a youthful era." Even the lot in front of the the prison was unpleasant-looking and "overgrown with...unsightly vegetation." One one side of the grotesque prison door lies an out-of-place, yet beautiful wild rose bush "covered...with delicate gems which might...offer their fragrance and fragile beauty" to the new prisoners and the prisoners off to execution. Obviously, the rose symbolizes a "moral blossom that...relieve[s] the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow." Therefore, this chapter alone tells tells the story of The Scarlet Letter.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Modern Library Classics, 2000.