SparkNotes No Fear Literature - Scarlet Letter

Chapter 1 - The Prison Door

A crowd of dreary-looking men and women stood outside of a heavy oak door studded with iron spikes. The founders of a new colony, regardless of the utopia they may hope for, always build two things first: a cemetery and a prison. So it is safe to assume that the founders of Boston built their first prison somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill just as they marked the first burial ground on Isaac Johnson's land. It took only fifteen or twenty years for the wooden jail to take on water stains and other signs of age, which darkened its already gloomy appearance. The rust on the door's iron spikes looked older than anything else in the New World. Like all things touched by crime, it seemed that the prison had never been young or new. In front of the prison there was a grassy area overgrown with weeds, which must have found something welcoming in the soil that had supported the black flowers of society. But on one side of the ugly prison door there was a wild rose bush, which was covered with delicate buds on this June day. It was as if Nature had taken pity and offered some beauty to the criminals walking in to serve their terms or heading out to face their executions. This rose bush, by an odd chance, is still alive today. Some say that its wild heartiness has preserved it, even after the giant pines and oaks that once overshadowed it have fallen. Others claim that it sprang up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchinson as she entered the prison. But it isn't my place to decide. Finding the bush directly on the threshold of my story, I can only pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. I hope the flower may serve as a symbol of some sweet moral lesson to be found here or offer relief from this dark tale of human frailty and sorrow.