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Reading schedule · Grades 9–12

The Scarlet Letter in 5 Weeks: A Reading Schedule

A five-week plan for reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one section a week. Each week gives the reading, a short summary of what happens, three discussion questions and the escape room that goes with it. For grades 9–12, in class or at home.

Pacing

Rhetoric-stage students (grades 9–12) can read a section a week independently, with time to annotate and to write. The questions suit seminar discussion or short written responses, and the escape room makes a quick check on the reading before the conversation or the essay. Some sections are much longer than others, so look ahead and give the heaviest weeks extra time.

Each week ends with an escape room on that week's reading: seven self-checking locks that run in any browser, with no logins, and progress is saved, so a room can be finished another day. Every room has free taster locks to try, and members can open them all.

Print this schedule Escape rooms on The Scarlet Letter

Week 1: ‘The Custom-House’ and Chapters 1–4

Read: ‘The Custom-House’ and Chapters 1–4

The narrator describes his years at the Salem Custom-House and the old papers he finds there. In Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne stands on the scaffold with her baby; a stranger in the crowd watches, the ministers urge her to speak, and a physician visits her in her cell.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Hawthorne begin with the Custom-House?
2. Why does Hester refuse to speak?
3. What might the rose-bush by the prison door suggest?

Escape room: The Wild Rose (lockedlessons.com/rooms/scarlet-letter-the-custom-house-and-chapters-1-4/)

Week 2: Chapters 5–10

Read: Chapters 5–10

Hester lives by her needlework at the edge of town and raises her strange child, Pearl. At Governor Bellingham's hall she fights to keep Pearl, Mistress Hibbins calls from her window, and Roger Chillingworth tightens his hold over Arthur Dimmesdale.

Discussion questions

1. What kind of child is Pearl, and what might she stand for?
2. Who helps Hester keep Pearl, and why?
3. What is Chillingworth trying to discover?

Escape room: The Elf-Child (lockedlessons.com/rooms/scarlet-letter-chapters-5-10/)

Week 3: Chapters 11–15

Read: Chapters 11–15

Dimmesdale suffers in secret and keeps a midnight vigil on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl as a light appears in the sky. Some townspeople now give Hester's letter a new meaning, she talks with Chillingworth by the shore, and Pearl asks questions.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Dimmesdale stand on the scaffold only at night?
2. How has Hester's place in the town changed?
3. What has Chillingworth become?

Escape room: Midnight on the Scaffold (lockedlessons.com/rooms/scarlet-letter-chapters-11-15/)

Week 4: Chapters 16–20

Read: Chapters 16–20

Hester and Pearl walk in the forest, and Hester meets Dimmesdale, tells him Chillingworth's secret, and they plan to flee by ship. Hester throws aside the letter, Pearl at the brook will not come to her, and the minister walks home strangely changed.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Hester feel free in the forest?
2. Why does Pearl react as she does at the brook?
3. What is strange about Dimmesdale's walk home?

Escape room: A Flood of Sunshine (lockedlessons.com/rooms/scarlet-letter-chapters-16-20/)

Week 5: Chapters 21–24

Read: Chapters 21–24

On Election Day the ship's captain brings Hester unwelcome news. After the procession and the sermon, the minister stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl, and the last chapter tells what becomes of Chillingworth, Pearl and Hester.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Dimmesdale finally go up on the scaffold?
2. What happens to Chillingworth once his victim is gone?
3. Why does Hester return to Boston at the end?

Escape room: The Revelation (lockedlessons.com/rooms/scarlet-letter-chapters-21-24/)