The Scarlet Letter: The Ending

The last few chapters are my favorite part of The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne is at his best both in plot and writing. Since I've gone over his word choices before and how much I love them, and since I just got finished bashing Hawthorne for his spoiler tendencies, I'll focus on the good.

Hawthorne, while speaking of Reverend Dimmesdale refers to "the polluted priest" (125). I enjoy this metaphor because, 1) pollution is bad, 2) pollution expands and affects all those around it, and 3) the Reverend speaks to large populations, therefore, infecting all of them? Does the fact that Aurther Dimmsdale sinned and hid it, taint his whole parish?

In the forest, Pearl transforms from her unpredictable imp to a gentle child picking flowers and adorning herself with them. She "became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad" (131-2). The power of the forest is a major theme in The Scarlet Letter. It transforms Pearl into a good child; it turns Hester's and Aurther's lives around; it is where the Black Man resides to take souls.

A line that stands alone. "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true" (137).

Hawthorne uses color throughout the novel. Some follow, I'm sure there's more that I'm leaving out. But is there significance in the use of color? Does Hawthorne mean for us to associate certain things with different colors?
The scarlet letter. The red rose bush next to the prison door. Hester clads herself in gray all the time. Her hair is black. Pearl once takes seaweed and makes herself a green 'A' to place on her chest. When she takes off the scarlet letter and lets down her hair the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees" (130).

Finally, we get to the moral of the story (according to Hawthorne). "Among many moral which press upon us from the minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:-'Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" (163). Is Hawthorne saying that Dimmesdale's sin was not in adultery but in the lying of it?

Just a few thoughts.