The Scarlet Letter: Chapter 1
Guess first. Then read the summary. Then open the answers.
Chapter questions
- Question 1 · Recall
What are the gathered townspeople standing in front of at the start of the chapter?
Answer in your head or on paper first
Show answer
A heavy wooden prison in Boston, with an oak door studded with iron spikes.Reference: Chapter 1, the crowd at the prison
- Question 2 · Recall
What grows on the grass plot between the prison and the street?
Answer in your head or on paper first
Show answer
Unsightly weeds. The narrator calls the prison itself the black flower of civilized society.Reference: Chapter 1, the grass plot
- Question 3 · Recall
Which historical woman does the narrator say the wild rosebush may be linked to?
Answer in your head or on paper first
Show answer
Ann Hutchinson, whose imprisonment the narrator mentions as a possible tie to the bush.Reference: Chapter 1, the rosebush by the threshold
- Question 4 · Why
Why does the narrator say the founders of a new colony still set aside ground for a cemetery and a prison?
Answer in your head or on paper first
Show answer
Whatever ideal society they hoped to build, they treated both as needs of any community, so they provided for them early.Reference: Chapter 1, the narrator on cemeteries and prisons
- Question 5 · Why
Why does the narrator offer the rosebush's flower to the reader?
Answer in your head or on paper first
Show answer
He hopes it may stand for a moral good found in the story, or lighten a sad tale about human weakness.Reference: Chapter 1, the closing paragraph
Chapter summary
The novel opens with a crowd of Puritan settlers in Boston, bearded men in dark clothes and steeple-crowned hats and women with and without hoods, gathered before the town prison. No one speaks in this chapter. Only the narrator talks, reflecting on how even colonies planned as perfect societies soon needed a burial ground and a jail. The wooden prison is described as weathered, dark and rusted, with an iron-spiked oak door that looks as if it was never new.
Between the prison and the street lies an overgrown plot of weeds. Beside the prison threshold a wild rosebush is in bloom, and the narrator says it gives beauty and fragrance to prisoners going in and to condemned people going out to their fate. He wonders whether it is tied to Ann Hutchinson. He ends by offering a flower from the bush to the reader, hoping it may stand for some sweet moral blossom in a sad story.
Come back in a few days and try these 5 again before you open the answers.
Study your own books on Mind86
Study a whole book from your own copy. Upload your own copy after you sign up.
Create an account