Study Guide: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Narrated by:
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Sheila Kerwin
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SuperSummary
About this listen
SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality instructional study guides for challenging works of literature. This audio study guide for The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the book’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes such as sin, punishment, and forgiveness; the self in society and in private; gender norms and relationships between men and women; and the weight of the past. Featured content also includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay questions, and discussion topics.
Set in the 1600s in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, this classic of the American Romantic era tells the story of Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman who had an affair, gave birth to a daughter, and is thus sentenced to wear a scarlet letter “A” for adultery. The novel suggests that it is partly because she has “sinned” that Hester has such a keen sense of compassion; her personal experience of guilt and sadness leads her to empathize where others might condemn.
This audio study guide presents the same expert content - written by experienced teachers, professors, and literary scholars - in an easy-to-access audio format. SuperSummary study guides demonstrate an authoritative voice, present expert analysis, offer big picture ideas, and help listeners understand a work’s underlying meanings and conclusions.
©2020 SuperSummary (P)2020 SuperSummaryListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
With a balance of wisdom, candor, and scholarly rigor, the beloved archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, traces the human experience from ancient times to today to find threads of connection in our yearning for God, love, honor, beauty, truth, and immortality. He looks at our modern appetite for consumption and individualism and offers a penetrating analysis of how we got here and how we can look to our roots and our faith to find purpose each day amid the noise of competing desires.
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Low score for modernism
- By Joey on 05-17-21
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The Forgotten Language
- An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths
- By: Erich Fromm
- Narrated by: Kevin Young
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In this study, Fromm argues that man needs to analyze his unconscious thoughts, his dreams, and his conscious fantasies, as they reflect a universal and symbolic representation of himself.
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Fromm at full steam
- By Paul on 02-15-16
By: Erich Fromm
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The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
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The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....
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Simple, Beautiful, and Exquisitely Textured
- By Darwin8u on 04-09-13
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Religion for Atheists
- A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved on by Alain de Botton's inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false - and yet that religions still have important things to teach the secular world.
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Disappointing, Erroneous, Implausible
- By Douglas C. Bates on 11-02-12
By: Alain de Botton
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The Holy Longing
- The Search for a Christian Spirituality
- By: Ronald Rolheiser
- Narrated by: Bill Loran
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Listeners will be fully engaged in a unique and altogether fascinating discussion of Christian spirituality. Rolheiser seeks to reconcile the rift between a smorgasbord of spiritual voices and an authentic Christian discipleship by the use of anecdotes, personal examples and a wide range of literary and cultural references. His starting point is the desire within us that longs irresistibly for fulfillment.
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Great content
- By Allison Winter on 11-07-23
By: Ronald Rolheiser
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The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
- By: Stephen Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Bolder even than the ambitious books for which Stephen Greenblatt is already renowned, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve explores the enduring story of humanity's first parents. Comprising only a few ancient verses, the story of Adam and Eve has served as a mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole long history of our fears and desires, as both a hymn to human responsibility and a dark fable about human wretchedness.
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For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
- By Darwin8u on 02-11-18
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Strangers in a Strange Land
- Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World
- By: Charles J. Chaput
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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From Charles J. Chaput, author of Living the Catholic Faith and Render unto Caesar, comes Strangers in a Strange Land, a fresh, urgent, and ultimately hopeful treatise on the state of Catholicism and Christianity in the United States. America today is different in kind, not just in degree, from the past. And this new reality is unlikely to be reversed.
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A Must Read
- By CFletcher on 07-04-17
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Stay
- A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It
- By: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Narrated by: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness.
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Informative but oddly dispassionate
- By Scott on 01-07-14
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Stories We Tell Ourselves
- Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: Richard Holloway
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of what it all means: our place in a small corner of one of billions of galaxies, at the end of billions of years of existence. In this new book Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are.
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Effortlessly profound
- By Consi on 09-28-21
By: Richard Holloway
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The Creation of Anne Boleyn
- A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen
- By: Susan Bordo
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: Neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life.
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Most Enjoyable Biography--Win!
- By Roswatheist on 03-29-14
By: Susan Bordo