By no means, am I a literary scholar…and reading this book reinforced that. I didn’t enjoy reading it. I found it to be boring. It goes on and on about useless details and unimportant narratives (this coming from a guy who loves long-winded Les Miserables)
With that said – there are valuable lessons and intriguing ideas within its pages, if you can take the time to find them. Once I stopped to think about the topics, I had some wonderful insights, and thought it was a pretty good story. But that’s only after I stopped reading it and took time to reflect.
I am coming to find that sometimes that’s what “classic literature” means. There are some great things to be learned, but you have to have the tenacity to get through the boring parts in order to find them. Only those with determination will be granted the reward. Well, in this case, I don’t yet know if the reward was worth the effort, but here are some thoughts.
I do appreciate the fact that the book points out the seriousness of adultery. Our culture today is so flippant and non-chalant about morals, that it is refreshing to see a story which treats it with gravity.
Here are a few quotes and I my insights concerning them:
“There are few things,—whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought,—few things hidden from the man, who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery.”
I find this to be very true. When someone dedicates themselves to discovering the answer to a mystery, it is nearly impossible to stop its discovery. In this case, it was to the destruction and ruin of the husband, who could never forgive or forget.
“The spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.”
Time does not erase sin. Sometimes we can stop thinking about it as often, or justify it, but time alone does not heal the wound. There needs to be something more.
“Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.”
If we don’t have friends, how will we know our enemies? We must know good to recognize evil. It’s like knowing something is counterfeit. The way to know something is a counterfeit is not to study it, but to study the original. If we study the truth, the lies stand out. If we make true friendships, we recognize the false ones.
“They shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow; while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.”
Are any of our leaders perfect? Are any of them as good as we hope them to be? I would guess there are very few. Everyone has made mistakes. Everyone is ashamed. Does it mean they can never do good again? I don’t think so. I don’t think errors should be made public knowledge, but neither to I think its fine to hide them away like they didn’t happen. They should be dealt with - apologies made, restitution made, forgiveness granted, and second chances afforded.
“I your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!”
The better we get, the worse we realize we were, and the worse we feel for our prior sins and errors.
“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”
Sometimes we don’t know how much the sin has changed us and weighed us down, until we are free of it. Only once we are free do we see the degree of our captivity.
“No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
“In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.”
"A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part."
“To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish, and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.”
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