BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn 17th-century Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne walks out of prison into a crowd of hard-faced townspeople with an infant in her arms and a scarlet letter A embroidered on her dress. She has been convicted of adultery and sentenced to wear this mark for the rest of her life, but she refuses to name the child's father. As she stands on the pillory scaffold under the gaze of ministers, magistrates, and an entire community that wants her broken, she holds herself with a strange dignity, and the crowd cannot quite bring her down. What no one in that crowd knows is that a stranger watching from the edge of the square is her long-absent husband, and that the man who will be destroyed by her secret is already standing above her in the balcony of the church.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Scarlet Letter
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Scarlet Letter. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a woman stand on a wooden pillory beneath a thousand unrelenting eyes?
✓ Answer
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hester's three-hour public exposure on the scaffold is her formal punishment. Hawthorne uses the moment to dramatize the weight of communal shame in colonial Boston.
- First half
In what book does a witch lean from a Governor's window and invite an outcast mother to a forest meeting?
✓ Answer
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Mistress Hibbins leans from the Governor's window and invites Hester to a witches' gathering. Hester refuses because her child still keeps her on the side of the saved.
- First half
In what book does a doctor show his patient ugly weeds plucked from a grave without a tombstone?
✓ Answer
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Chillingworth proposes that the dark plants sprang from a buried secret. The conversation is a subtle attempt to provoke Dimmesdale into confessing his sin.
- Second half
In what book does an elf-child fashion seaweed into a green A on her own small bosom?
✓ Answer
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Playing on the beach, Pearl gathers eel-grass and mimics her mother's embroidered emblem with a freshly green character on her own chest, mystifying Hester.
- Second half
In what book does a woman fling her embroidered emblem among withered leaves at the edge of a brook?
✓ Answer
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Believing she can undo her shame, Hester unclasps the token and throws it toward the stream. It lands on the bank, glittering like a lost jewel.
- Near the end
In what book does a sea captain tell a heroine that an old doctor has booked her escape ship?
✓ Answer
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the market-place the shipmaster tells Hester that Chillingworth has arranged his own berth aboard the vessel, ruining her escape plan with Dimmesdale.
