scarlet letter chapters 1-8

Question 0

What did the prisons heavy oak door look like?

Answer 0

It was studded with iron spikes

Question 1

A crowd of somber, dreary looking people gathered outside what?

Answer 1

The door of a prison

Question 2

What did the prison appear to have been constructed to do?

Answer 2

Hold dangerous criminals

Question 3

What was the one incongruity next to the prison door?

Answer 3

The rosebush

Question 4

The rosebush offers a reminder of what?

Answer 4

Natures kindness to the condemned

Question 5

What will the rosebush provide?

Answer 5

A “sweet moral blossom” or a relief in the face of unrelenting sorrow & gloom

Question 6

Who emerged from the prison door & makes her way to a scaffold to be publicly condemned?

Answer 6

Hester Prynne

Question 7

What is a scaffold?

Answer 7

A raised platform

Question 8

What is Hester Prynne publicly condemned for?

Answer 8

Adultery

Question 9

Women in the crowd make disparaging comments about Hester, mostly about what?

Answer 9

The letter “A” stitched on her chest in gold & scarlet

Question 10

What does the letter “A” stand for?

Answer 10

Adulterer

Question 11

Who calls Hester forth to the scaffold?

Answer 11

The beadle

Question 12

What do the children do to Hester?

Answer 12

Taunt her

Question 13

What do the adults do to Hester?

Answer 13

Stare at her

Question 14

What were the scenes from Hester’s life that flashed before her eyes?

Answer 14

She see’s her parents standing before their home in rural England & she see’s a “misshapen” scholar, much older than her, who she married & followed to Europe

Question 15

Who does Hester spot in the crowd of people surrounding the scaffold?

Answer 15

Her husband

Question 16

What did Hester’s husband do?

Answer 16

Sent her to America but didn’t fulfill his promise to follow her

Question 17

What is Hester’s husband dressed in?

Answer 17

A strange combination of traditional European clothes & Native American dress

Question 18

What does Hester’s husband tell her?

Answer 18

The she shouldn’t reveal his identity

Question 19

What does the stranger tell Hester’s husband about her crime & punishment?

Answer 19

That she is the wife of a learned Englishman & had been living with him in Amsterdam when he decided to emigrate to America

Question 20

Roger Chillingworth (Hester’s husband) said that Hester’s “husband” must be foolish to think he could keep a young woman happy, & asks what to the stranger?

Answer 20

He asks about the identity of the baby’s father

Question 21

What did the stranger tell Chillingworth about the baby’s father?

Answer 21

That Hester refuses to reveal her fellow sinner

Question 22

What is Hester’s punishment?

Answer 22

3 hours on the scaffold and a lifetime of wearing the scarlet letter on her chest

Question 23

Who is delegated to demand that Hester reveal the name of the child’s father?

Answer 23

Dimmesdale

Question 24

What does Hester say her child will seek?

Answer 24

A Heavenly Father and not an earthly one

Question 25

Who delivers a condemnatory sermon on sin, referring to the scarlet letter, which seems to the crowd to glow & burn?

Answer 25

Reverend Wilson

Question 26

At the end of the sermon, what happens to Hester?

Answer 26

She is led back into the prison

Question 27

Hester & her husband come face to face for the first time when he is called to her cell to provide what?

Answer 27

Medical assistance

Question 28

Chillingworth promised the jailer that he can make Hester more what?

Answer 28

Amenable to just authority

Question 29

What does Chillingworth offer Hester?

Answer 29

A cup of medicine

Question 30

Hester refuses to drink the medicine Chillingworth tries to give her because why?

Answer 30

She thinks he is trying to poison her

Question 31

Chillingworth tells her he isn’t poisoning her because why?

Answer 31

He wants her to live so he can have his revenge