Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" describes a stone barrier that two neighbors visit each year for repair. The wall is used as a metaphor for how we place barriers between each other, which is far easier to deal with, but is a loss in the long run. Buildings and structures have long been used to symbolize abstract ideas in literature. Hawthorn uses the prison, cottage, and scaffold as concrete representations for the rigid society, the psychological effects of the characters, and the morals of a society in The Scarlet Letter.
             Boston's prison ironically stood not only as a symbol of the severity of Puritan law, but also as a beacon of tolerance and a portraiture of Hester's resiliency and strength in The Scarlet Letter. The novel opens with the scene at the jail, and sets Hawthorne's tone with its description. Particularly the prison's door "a wooden edifice...heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes" gives an impression of firmness and reveals the strict enforcement of the even stricter Puritan law (45). Conversely, it can also be viewed as a symbol of Hester's strength throughout the novel. Inside the prison walls Hester and Chillingsworth can freely discuss their past without exposing themselves to the society. Seen by Boston's citizens as to seclude the society from its criminals, its wooden walls actually shelter Hester from the society. The jail also "looked more antique than anything else in the New World" (46). This indicates that the laws of the society remain very traditional in the beginnings of a modern country. However, Hawthorn directly challenges the ideas of harshness and traditionalism by describing a simple but beautiful rosebush that resides on one side of the prison door. He leads the reader to believe that "it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson" (46). Hutchinson was a religious woman, n...