This Monday we began reading The Scarlet Letter. The handout we got was a copy of the first chapter of the book. We read it then analyzed the basic themes, such as light and dark imagery and individual versus society. The first ideas we discussed were the contrast between the rosebush and the prison door, and the irony of the prison being one of the first buildings made in the colony. Afterwards, we started reading Chapter 2 as part of the homework.
The reading was a lot like the Minister's Black Veil and had the same dark and supernatural imagery and themes. The vocab word we discussed in class was liminality, referring to the "rite of passage" Hester experiences in her story.
An example usage of the word is: Medical interns experience a term of liminality when going through their first year of medical school.
I think Hester experienced liminality throughout of her story, but is liminality kind of on the same track as bildungsroman, or are those two totally different words?
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