Which best describes the effect of the words sad-colored,” steeple-crowned,” and iron spikes”?

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans are depicted as a sad and uniform group of people. Hawthorne never explicitly states his negative views towards the Puritans, rather he chooses to imply these views through his diction, color symbolism, comparing and contrasting, and his use of irony. In the first chapter, Hawthorne describes the Puritans as, “a throng of bearded men, in sad colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods…”(55). Hawthorne, using the color gray, portrays the Puritans as depressing and rigid people. The color gray is often used to represent people with sangfroid and is also associated with conformity. Gray also has a subduing effect on other colors in the same way that the Puritans try to control Hester’s heterodox behavior. By depicting the men and women as indistinguishable, Hawthorne further criticizes the Puritan uniformity and attempt to hide human nature. As a Romantic, Hawthorne believed that nature was superior to society and in nature nothing is uniform, so when the…show more content…
The townspeople revere Dimmesdale for his outward piety but fail to recognize his secret sin. Hawthorne portrays the Puritans as shallow with only an understanding of outwardly appearances. Hawthorne also implies that the Puritans are misguided in believing that imperfect people can and should be perfect. He also uses irony when the Puritans interpret the “great red letter in the sky… for ‘Angel’”(153). The letter “A” was previously given to Hester with the putative meaning of “adulteress,” now Hawthorne gives the scarlet letter to Dimmesdale. Yet the Puritans are naive to the truth of Dimmesdale’s sin even when shown evidence. From the evidence above, it can be inferred that Hawthorne abhors the Puritans, he implies this through color symbolism, comparing and contrasting, and irony through his diction in the text.

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