the whole of society, both past and present, is superior to the sum of any one or more of its parts. Hawthorne attacks this principle by writing The Scarlet Letter in a fashion that sets the symbol, as an element to his novel, as possessing more power, value, and worth than the entire narrative, which is his completed product. Hawthorne illustrates that the symbolism in the narrative is superior to the narrative itself in his revelation that a symbol was his prime motivation for writing the novel. The ambiguity and dynamic representation of the novel's central symbol throughout the narrative also compels the reader to fixate on the symbolism in order to understand and gain appreciation for what the narrative attempts to express. In The Custom House Hawthorne reveals his discovery of a package containing some fabric with a faded letter "A" imprinted on the cloth along with some documents describing the story behind this letter. Hawthorne claims that this discovery is the basis for his novel when he writes, "In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto neglected to examine a small role of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. This now I opened, and had the satisfaction to find, recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affairThere seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale"(Hawthorne, 25-26). Hawthorne immediately implies that if it were not for the scarlet letter that he discovers, his narrative would never have been written. In this respect the scarlet letter itself is foremost to the novel, in that the latter is dependent upon the former. The Scarlet Letter is thus based upon a symbol and Hawthorne stresses the importance and potency of this symbol when it takes on different meanings throughout the course of the novel. When the reader is first introduced to the symbolic scarlet letter Hawthorne invokes a perception that the letter is something ornamenta...
