The Scarlet Letter: The Custom House Summary & Analysis

A nameless narrator (who has a similar biography to Hawthorne) describes his job as chief executive officer of a Custom House, the place where taxes were paid on imported goods. The narrator describes his Custom House colleagues as "wearisome old souls" and Salem, the town where it was located, as old and run-down.

One rainy day, the narrator discovered a peculiar package in the upstairs storage area of the Custom House. The package contained a piece of fabric with a red letter "A" affixed to it along with several pages explaining the history of the letter. The narrator says this discovery formed the core of the story that he will now tell in The Scarlet Letter.

The narrator mentions that he's since lost his job at the Custom House. He draws a distinction between his "figurative self," whom the public would expect to be dismayed by the lost job, and the "real human being" who welcomed the changes in his life that allowed him to become "again a literary man."

The narrator says he now has the time to write The Scarlet Letter, a story he feels obligated to tell the world. He hopes to make his own mark as a writer and be remembered as a "scribbler of bygone days."