In "The Scarlet Letter", a book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the character named
             I think Pearl is a huge symbol in this story. She is a constant reminder to Hester that she has sinned, as is the scarlet letter on her chest. Pearl and the scarlet letter have some things in common too. Both are very eloquently designed. The scarlet letter is made of luxurious cloth and painstakingly detailed. Pearl is a beautiful young child who seems to even "glow" at times. She is also very intelligent.
             I think Pearl also resembles sin itself. While sin may seem beautiful and harmless on the outside like Pearl is, it can be a gut-wrenching, guilty experience for some people, in this case Hester Prynne. Take the instances when Pearl comes in contact with other kids. While she is lovely and pretty on the outside, she can turn into a monster in a second. "...Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathema's in some unknown tongue." (Pg. 86) Although Pearl caused Hester a lot of grief Hester loved her child very much so and proved it by saying "God gave me the child! He gave her, in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!--she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too! See ye not, she is the
             scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!" (Pg. 104)
             Pearl was also a painfully constant reminder of her mother's violation of the Seventh Commandment: Thou shall not commit adultery. Hester herself felt that Pearl was given to her not only as a blessing but a punishment worse than death or anything else. Somet
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