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Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Scarlet Letter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sin
Individuality and Conformity
Puritanism
Nature
The Occult
Summary
Analysis
The narrator describes Pearl as the human manifestation of Hester's sin: Pearl is filled with a sense of defiance and deviance, and does not fit in among the other children of the community.
Hester has passed on her own defiant "sinful" spirit to her daughter. Pearl is an individual, not a Puritan conformer.
Themes
Literary Devices
Quiz
Test Yourself
Like Hester, Pearl is painfully aware of her isolation. She has an innate sense that Hester's scarlet letter is linked to their rejection by society. She pleads with her mother to explain the letter's origin.
Pearl's obsession with the letter makes Hester think Pearl is possessed. But it's the secret surrounding the sin that obsesses Pearl .
Themes
Literary Devices
Quiz
Test Yourself
The townspeople consider Pearl the physical embodiment of sin, an "imp of evil."
