Reading Like a Serpent

Many remember The Scarlet Letter as required reading for reluctant sixteen year olds. The unnamed, elusive narrator of Hawthorne's "tale of human frailty and sorrow" is--some readers might say maddeningly--indirect, ambiguous, and inconsistent. Readers who hope to arrive at satisfying judgments about the book's four iconic characters--Hester, Arthur, Roger, and Pearl--are often left to arrive at their conclusions by guess and inference. The narrator provides what seems to be willfully incomplete