Biblical Symbolism In The Scarlet Letter

It is uncommon for readers to realize that among many famous works, there is Biblical symbolism implanted within. It does not matter what faith, or lack thereof, the reader or author identifies as, the symbolism is still present in several ways. The Scarlet Letter is set in the Puritan days where the protagonist, Hester Prynne, has been punished for the committing of adultery. Speak is a more contemporary book based on a high school girl, Melinda Sordino, who has been shunned due to a decision she made. Biblical symbolism is embedded in the content of these books through the punishment of The Scarlet Letter, the lack of faith in Speak, and the immorality in both novels.

The punishment that the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, and that of

The stories themselves closely relate to The Bible story entitled Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester commits adultery which causes her to be shunned from her community in Boston. Speak’s Melinda Sordino suffered the sexual sin of another character named Andy, which caused her to be shunned from the school she was enrolled. In the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, Jesus told the woman, “for you have had five husbands, and the on you now have is not your husband” (English Standard Version John 4.18). Similar to the characters in the novels, the Samaritan woman had also undergone adultery, in which she chose to commit herself. Later in the story, the Samaritan woman begins to confide in Jesus, confessing all that she had done. Afterwards she began to speak out, she ran to the town proclaiming the name of Jesus and telling the people how she had been transformed. We see a resemblance in both novels where the protagonists had spoken up about the demons they had been fighting within. They both found peace in opening up about their experience. We see these plots are almost identical with the story in The