bomber567 said:
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I had to read it during my junior year of high school, and I despised every fucking second of it. Just to be clear, I usually like these old classics as long as I can understand why they are respected and what the author was trying to accomplish (and I have a tendency of liking books that other people think are tedious, such as The Odyssey and Dante's Inferno). But The Scarlet Letter...Hawthorne's writing lacks any form of subtlety, as I felt his symbolism and messages were very clumsy and heavy handed, as I get the feeling that he didn't expect readers to understand their meaning unless getting hit over the head repeatedly with exposition. In addition, his writing is extremely dry and the pacing is way too slow. I just ended up hating all of the characters by the end, and getting through every page became a chore to the point that I kind of wanted my brain to aneurysm itself to save me from reading another word of the damn thing. My point is, fuck you Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Also, to some of the other posters, lay off of Charles Dickens, he's awesome!
You just brought back my painful memory of being required to read that book. I've never been required to read a worse book for school than The Scarlet Letter. At least Shakespeare has humor, at least Dickens eventually has something good happen in the last twenty percent of his books, but Hawthorne had
nothing that made me enjoy The Scarlet Letter. It was a book filled some of the most in-your-face symbolism, and it was very little story otherwise.
My English teacher tried to defend it as being revolutionary for the time -- for painting Hester as a character instead of identifying her as only an evil adulterer, for dealing with subjects like self-mutilation, self image, legalities, sin, adultery, and revenge, and for trying to give a new look at the culture of pre-Salem Witch Trials Boston. Apparently it was one of the few American books that became popular in Europe during the ninteenth century.
Okay, kind of sounds like The Crucible, which is a great American classic.
It's just freaking bad though. I wonder if at any point, Hawthorne handed a draft to a friend, and the friend said, "You know, every bit of symbolism and subtle messages is actually a lot more profound and in the your face than the actual story ever is."
I think I quite nicely summed up The Scarlet Letter, actually -- it's Hawthorne forcing his symbolism and underlying messages at the reader, and I guess there's a story in the book too.
And the book is incredibly easy to predict, too. So much of the book is skirting around the identity of Hester's adulterer. The book is always hinting about Dimmesdale, the town minister, being the adulterer. And it's some in your face hinting too -- Hester's child creating this immediate connection on a glimpse Dimmesdale, Dimmesdale being blatant about being torn with grief every time he sees Hester, nature bending over backwards to show this connection between Hester and Dimmesdale (a shooting star in the sky of their reunion the shape of the scarlet letter, how subtle of Hawthorne), Hester's old husband suspecting Dimmesdale of being the adulterer, Dimmesdale eventually going crazy with his teaching of piety and monogamy --
and do you know what the twist is? The twist at the end of the book?
That Dimmesdale actually was Hester's adulterer.
No fucking shit. There's no Clue-style "there are three people who could've done it and you have to figure which one did it", the suspect was Dimmesdale and nobody else. And Hawthorne is so smug and dramatic with the reveal too, like he hadn't made it pissing obvious the entire book, as though he hadn't taken entire chapters of the book to describe these 'abnormalities in nature' on how Dimmesdale is the adulterer.
It's just a bad book. I am so angry that it is considered a timeless classic comparable with Arthur Miller's or John Steinbeck's books.
