Hey all! I know I've been rather remiss about posting reviews as of late. I'm currently reading every single sonnet Shakespeare ever wrote (154) and I know that no one actually wants to read a review of each one. So until I comment on that as a whole, and also read some new books, I thought I would entertain you lot with this review that I wrote for The Hunt.The Hunt is a massive scavenger hunt that happens every January at my college, and as seniors, my friends and I decided to really go out with a bang and do the whole thing with great gusto and skill. Our team, No More Unicorns is awesome. Just sayin'. (Also follow us on Twitter if you have an account, @nomoreunicorns) One of the challenges was to write a scathing book review of The Scarlet Letter. So here it is, and just remember, it's a joke! (Well, sort of).
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author who can be commended for many things. Not many people can boast of living in a house with not six but seven gables, and being bros with Herman Melville. What he cannot be commended for is the writing of The Scarlet Letter. A novel forced upon high school students practically since it’s inception, Hawthorne subsequently subjects readers to a brutal bashing of symbolism (RED IS BAD) and intolerance set against that all so intriguing backdrop of early Puritan New England.
Our heroine, Hester Prynne, is supposed to be the ultimate badass. Not only does she have hot sex with the minister and then keep the resulting kid, she proudly wears a red letter “A” on her chest, marking her out as an adulteress. But no, we aren’t allowed to recognize just how cool and strong and independent Hester is being. Feminism is reigned in tightly, in favor of an overbearing Puritanical style that begs the reader to see the main character as pathetic, relatively evil and in the wrong. Like we’re supposed to enjoy reading about someone who sucks? Then of course there is Pearl, Hester’s daughter from her naughty night with Dimmesdale (who I will thoroughly scourge later). Pearl is the essence of a demon child, and yet we’re again supposed to have opposite feelings and take pity on her, love her even. Oh, and lest I forget, we must recognize that SHE IS A SYMBOL! Pearl of course is nothing compared to her father, the town minister Dimmesdale. A man who preachers all the usual Christian whatnot and then goes out and does the sexy widow late one night in the forest. A character one might actually be able to sink their teeth into. Except for Hawthorne’s inability to let the reader do so. Instead we are handed everything character trait wrapped firmly in it’s one and only meaning and told to apply that to the scene at hand. The man’s name is Dimmesdale for crying out loud. I would have gotten that he’s depressed and morally conflicted if his name had been Johnson too, thanks very much.
Even scenes when Dimmesdale is whipping himself, struggling with his desire for Hester and his love of God aren’t interesting because the reader has already come to expect how things will play out. They won’t get together, there will be sillier blathering about morality and rose bushes and prison doors and then the book will end. There is nothing to the plot that lends any sort of credibility. In fact, I get the sense that were I to rip out all the pages of the book, spread them on the ground in front of me, trample on them for good measure and then put them back together in a random order, I would still get the same story.
In fact, the only good thing about The Scarlet Letter is the ending. Not the ending, but the fact that the book itself ends and thank God for that. As I was reading I found myself thinking I would rather get a paper cut every time I turned the page than actually finish reading the book, and my edition was at least 200 pages long. So don’t go read the Scarlet Letter. In fact, don’t get anywhere near it, unless it is to casually toss is into an open flame as you pass by on your way to bro out with more quality works like The Counting House and Moby Dick.
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