Part 1 of Essay
“This scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine . . . . The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron” (Hawthorne 62-63). A scaffold's effect on the novel can be seen through an examination of the first, second, and third scaffold scenes. These sections mark the be ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... the reader becomes aware of Hester being shunned as an outsider, when she is placed on the scaffold: “Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a mans shoulders above the street . . . . The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes” (63-64). At the same time, the first scaffold scene is the setting for the introduction of Roger Chillingworth, Hest ....