《红字》中字母A的象征意义(英文)

Symbolism Of The Letter “A” Throughout The Scarlet Letter 《红字》中字母“A”的象征意义

方蒂蒂

江西农业大学2004届毕业生

Fang didi

Class 2004

Jiangxi Agriculture University

There have been a lot of arguments over the diversity of symbol over the past years. However, Nathaniel Hawthorne is successful in employing symbolic techniques and lays great emphasis on the diversity of symbol. The Scarlet letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is undoubtedly been considered as his masterpiece, is praised as one of the greatest novels and regarded as the first symbolic novel in American literature. This novel includes many profound and important symbols, and the author’s symbolic style has the rich flavors of emotion and conforms to no conventional pattern.Hawthorn's symbolism, especially the symbolic letter “ A” helps make the keynote of the story clearer and the characters to the life. The changing symbolic meanings throughout the novel are the best expressed by the letter “A”. This paper attempts to discuss the diversity of symbolism in this novel, i.e. the changing symbolic meanings of the scarlet letter “A”, and their manifestations.

Key words: Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Scarlet Letter; symbols; symbolism; the diversity

象征的多义性曾引起过不少争议,然而纳撒尼尔·霍桑却出色地运用了象征主义手法和成功地突出强调了象征的多义性.<<红字>>无庸质疑地被认为是霍桑最杰出的作品,也被赞誉为美国文学上最出色小说,同时也是美国第一部象征小说.这部小说包含了很多意味深远而且重要的象征, 作者的象征手法具有浓郁的感情色彩,不拘于传统形式.作者通过象征手法,尤其是具有象征意义字母“A”使得文章主线清晰,并且给人物注入了生命力.字母“A”作为最具代表的例子是其在小说中含义的变化.本文试从红字“A”象征意义的多义性，讨论《红字》中的字母“A”的象征手法.

关键词: 纳撒尼尔·霍桑; 《红字》; 象征; 象征主义; 多义性

ⅠThe introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his intention of writing The Scarlet Letter.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in an impoverished noble New England’s family, the descendent of a long line of puritan ancestors. Among his ancestors, 2 generations were big wheels in organs of power of unite of religion and politics in colony areas. They persecuted heterodoxy by zealot of Puritan. Lonely childhood branded his personality with melancholy and taciturn. After his father was lost at sea when he was only four, his mother became overly protective and pushed him toward more isolated pursuits. His childhood left him overly shy and bookish, and molded his life as a writer. Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdon College. Though Hawthorne attacked the harmful religious zealots and stifling religious doctrines of Garvin, he viewed on the world with religious sense of good and devil in his deep heart. He summed up the social contradiction, wh ich he didn’t understand and was caused by the development of capitalism as abstract “evil”. As he said, the source of social evils contradictions among individuals phenomenon of crime were not in the material social life, but were caused by intrinsic “evil” in inner world of man. So Hawthorne wrote that the resolution to social problems started with the omnipresent “evil”. He said that once the internal world was purified, many sin loafing about external world would disappear. His focusing on the abstract “evil” decided his writing trend mostly. He preferred describing trans-natural, weird, horrible scenes or dark, unusual psychological activities in order to explore the roots of all kinds of social hidden “evil”. He said himself “only loyal to the truth of heart, comprising the heart to a winding and extending cave and the writing to “driving actively in our common human nature”. So he usually analyzed a person’s psychology cutting off social conditions peeled off the “evil” existing in everyone’s heart lay er off layer. Hawthorne focused on the problem of guilt cared for the deeper psychology and his major novels generally dealt with sensational material, like poisoning, murder, adultery, and crime, because he was ambitious to explore the result of sin, the effect on human conscience of guilt, pride, egotism, and isolation. His exploration of the soul resulted from his skeptical attitude toward the limited social reality that was characterized by a rapid change in almost all aspects of social life, and from h is “seclusion” of thinking.The central subject of Hawthorne’s major works was the human soul. According to him, “There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.” So in almost every book he writes, Hawthorne discusses sin and evil. For example, in another his novel Endicott And The Red Cross, he describes a pretty woman also wears a scarlet letter on her cloth. Human’s characters are complex and elusive and difficult to see through. So it’s no right to define the human’s character good or evil simply and cleanly. Just because of the complexity of the human character and the difference of the standards of good and evil, these literatures are so readable and fascinating magnetically. Just because he lived in an age when the dynamic influence of Puritanism was gone and the impact of romanticism and Transcendentalism was large felt among the intellectuals, and thus his view of man and human history originates, to a great extent, is Puritanism. The sensibility led to his understanding of evil being at the very core of human life, which is typical of the Calvinistic belief that human beings are basically depraved and corrupted, hence, they should obey God to atone for their sins. Just as I mention above, in many of his stories and novels, the Puritan concept of life is condemned, or the Puritan past is shown in an almost totally negative light, especially in his The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne is attracted in every way to the Puritan world, even though he condemns its less humane manifestations. In this particular