written artwork - the scarlet letter

If you want a poetic, slightly tragic, but still heartwarming story...this might be the book for you.

This is actually the first book I read on my big list. I've waited to review it for reasons unknown to even myself. I believe it may be because the story is just so...so right. It has unassuming brilliance that is hard to describe.

The elements I loved about this book include the setting of Boston (or Salem area) in Puritan times. I am fortunate enough to have lived in Boston for several years and, before reading this book, visited Salem, where Hawthorne lived and wrote (the photo is one we took while in Salem of Hawthorne himself). It was lovely to picture the places I knew in the olden times.

The idea of Puritan New England are almost never good. Over zealous people, witch hunts, judgment, and close mindedness are often what we think of most. The story of The Scarlet Letter involves some of these characteristics with the towns people, but it also shows them learning from the actions of an adulterer, which challenges the stereotype we have of Puritans.

I suppose all I can say is that The Scarlet Letter gets my recommendation. And my agreement that it is truly and American classic.

And as a little aside...I am currently reading War and Peace. Let's just say it is long enough to let me catch up on others I have finished, but haven't written about! Can't wait until I can review this one :)

A list of what's to come, and what has already been explored.

My Written Artwork Journey Explained here

1. Animal Farm - George Orwell
2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Emma - Jane Austen
4. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
5. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
6. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
7. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
8. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
9. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
10. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
11. Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
    
12. Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
13. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
14. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
16. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
17. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
18. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
19. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
20. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
21. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
22. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
23. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
24. The sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
25. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
26. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
27. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
29. Little Woman - Louisa Ma Alcott
30. Crime and Punishment - Fedor Dostoyevsky
31. Watership Down - Richard Adams
32. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
33. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
34. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
35. Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
36. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
37. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
38. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
39. Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
40. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
41. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
42. A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
43. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen