摘 要

    作为19世纪美国最伟大的浪漫主义小说家，纳撒尼尔.霍桑善于在自己的作品中运用象征手法。他在小说《红字》中大量运用了象征手法，寓意深刻，使人物的形象更加鲜明，丰富了作品的内涵。鉴于该手法在小说中的广泛应用以及深刻的影响，本文从以下几个方面分析其在作品中的意义和作用。在该小说中，红字“A”贯穿全文。随着女主人公生活的变化，“A”的意义由最初的 “通奸” 转变为“疏远”，“孤独”，最后变成“能干”，“天使”。另外，海斯特，奇灵渥斯，丁梅斯戴尔这三位主人公也有各自的象征意义。小说中的景物以及地点，例如森林，河流，监狱，玫瑰花丛，绞刑架，也有深刻的寓意。

关键词：象征 红字 通奸

Abstract

    As America’s greatest romantic novelist of the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne is good at using symbolism in his work. He uses many writing techniques of symbolism in his representative novel The Scarlet Letter. All the symbols used are meaningful,which make the characters more vivid and enrich the intension of the work. For the wide application of this technique and its profound effects, this study has been carried out from the following aspects: In the novel, the scarlet letter “A” runs through the whole article. With the change of the heroine’s life, the meaning of “A” has changed from “adultery” to “ alienation”, “loneliness”, and finally become “ability”, “angel”. In addition, the other three characters including Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale also have their own symbolic meanings. What’s more, some natural surroundings and settings such as the forest, river, prison, rosebush and scaffold all have deep symbolic implications.

Key Words: symbolism  the scarlet letter  adultery 

1 Introduction
The Scarlet Letter was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. This is Hawthorne’s first full-length novel. It is a breakthrough in the history of American novel writing. The story is based on a love tragedy, which happens in North American colonies of New England. Petrus holds the opinion that The Scarlet Letter stresses the dark and somber side of human affairs. In the novel, the heroine Hester Prynne is described as the incarnation of holy morality. Hawthorne takes the scarlet letter “A” as a basic thread, which highlights the unequal treatment that Hester Prynne has suffered and exposes the unfairness of the society, irrationality of the code and the hypocrisy of people. In the novel, symbolism is a distinguished feature. The characters, plot and language are all imaginative. The author also puts the characters’ psychological activities and intuition first. So it is not only regarded as one of the symbols of American romantic novels, but also the openness of American psychoanalysis novels.