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Symbolism In early Boston around 1650, life was simple and bland being peculiar for people to judge or be excessive. Irony, however, was portrayed in the accounts from this time period. Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter displays many people, places, and objects, used as symbols: Pearls hidden purity, the scaffold’s double edge, and the prison’s rose. Pearl’s attitude was very witty for a young puritan girl, she was better off called stone, even …

…what is left of her life and beauty. The rose bush showed the triumph of Hester raising Pearl in an unfit area. Pearl, the rose bush, and the scaffold were the basis for which a whole other story was written. Interpreted in these ways you see how the life in Boston was very symbolized in The Scarlet Letter. Which in turn only points out that people should not judge but look how they fit in.