Chapter I

The Prison-Door

A THRONG OF BEARDED MEN, in sad-coloured garments, and grey, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old church-yard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,—or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,—we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

Chapter II
The Custom-House

Footnotes

  1. Hawthorne directly addresses the readers to give them guidance as to how the story is meant to be read. He tells the readers the story is about humanity’s sinful nature. Hawthorne states that despite the content of the story, readers will be able to understand the good that can come from the bad, which is his intended purpose with sharing this story.

    — Georgia, Owl Eyes Staff

  2. The rose-bush is a symbol of hope in the story and a metaphor for the natural-born goodness in humanity. By presenting a metaphorical rose to the reader, Hawthorne tells us that in the midst of a tale of suffering, we can learn a moral lesson about humanity, allowing something good to come from a story of suffering.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  3. This simile is important to the major theme of deception in the novel. This means that the sinful nature of humans is sometimes hard to predict because we don’t understand exactly where it comes from--sometimes simply happening over time.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  4. Isaac Johnson was a British-born colonist who was one of the four who founded the first church in Charlestown. Although the story is fictitious, Hawthorne incorporates realism and historical facts to enhance the believability of the story. Hawthorne does this because he wants the story to be read as a sort of realistic lesson to teach people about the downfalls of an unforgiving society.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  5. This is a bleak, yet true, blanket statement that applies to human history. Hawthorne uses a cemetery and prison to symbolize what he believes to be the most certain things for humanity: death (why every town needs a cemetery) and bad human nature (why every town needs a prison).

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  6. A steeple-crowned hat was popular in new England during the time of the story. A steeple-crowned hat has a high, pointed top that resembles a steeple. Hawthorne implements a religious image in the first sentence of the story to draw readers’ attention to religious themes and symbolism throughout the course of the text. Hawthorne consistently uses religious imagery and symbolism to communicate the importance of rigid Puritan beliefs in 17th century Boston.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  7. Anne Hutchinson was born in England, but came to North America as a Puritan leader seeking religious freedom. There, she had a change of heart that saw the correspondence between church and state as a suffocating mechanism for human life. She campaigned for unpopular ideas including Native American rights, women’s rights, and the belief that human consciousness is more important in moral decision making than the word of the church. She was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and excommunicated for her unpopular beliefs.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  8. This personification of Nature suggests that conflict amongst humans is the sole result of humanity, and that the natural world has nothing to do with human conflict. Here, Hawthorne suggests that to prisoners, locked up by society, Nature can offer kindness and pity.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  9. This is another use of dark color as symbolism for bad human nature in the first chapter. Hawthorne claims that prisons are the “black flower of a civilised society.” This is an interesting symbol because there are no truly black flowers in the natural world. Perhaps what Hawthorne is suggesting is that it isn’t human nature that has bad tendencies, but instead the effect of society on humans that breeds evil actions.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  10. The wild rose-bush contrasts with the ugly vegetation of the overgrown plot of grass. The rose-bush is symbolic of the possibility of goodness in human beings-even within the “rot” of a bad community. Notice how Hawthorne contrasts the dichotomy of good and evil in humans and how it emerges as a central theme of the story.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff

  11. The novel starts out with this modified emotional image that claims garments to be “sad-coloured.” In this instance, the garments are a symbol of gloomy and hopeless circumstances, going forward notice how different clothing corresponds to particular character traits . Notice, also, how color is used throughout the novel to portray shifting mood and emotions.

    — Evan, Owl Eyes Staff