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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Chillingworth say in Chapter 14 the town council has been debating?
(a) Whether to take away Pearl from Hester.
(b) Whether to take away the scarlet letter.
(c) Whether to arrest Hester again.
(d) Whether to exile Hester from Boston.

2. Which of the following creatures is not mentioned while Pearl plays on the shore?
(a) Jellyfish.
(b) Birds.
(c) Horseshoe crab.
(d) Lobster.

3. Next to whom is Hester Prynne eventually buried?
(a) Dimmesdale.
(b) No one--she is buried alone.
(c) Chillingworth, her husband.
(d) Pearl.

4. Which of the following is NOT used by the narrator to describe Pearl in Chapter 21?
(a) Bird-like.
(b) Effervescent.
(c) Dour.
(d) Gem-like.

5. In Chapter 14, the narrator symbolized the truth by what?
(a) "A mysterious maze."
(b) "A red-hot iron."
(c) "A fletched arrow."
(d) "A tall white pedestal."

Short Answer Questions

1. Who, according to the narrator, is at the "head of the social system" in Puritan times?

2. When Pearl repeatedly asks Hester what the letter stand for, what does Hester tell her in Chapter 15?

3. Where does Dimmesdale imagine a "scarlet token?"

4. Whom does Hester decide to seek out for a meeting at the end of Chapter 13?

5. Who is the "grim, ugly-eyed old man" who recognizes Pearl?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why, in Chapter 18, does Hester remove the scarlet letter and fling it into a brook?

2. In Chapter 14, why is Chillingworth in the woods?

3. When Hester calls for Pearl to come to her in Chapter 19, Pearl will not move from her spot in the woods. What prevents her from going to her mother?

4. Why do Hester and Pearl gather with other townspeople at the beginning of Chapter 21?

5. Why does Hester go to meet Dimmesdale in the woods?

6. Why does Hester say that Dimmesdale should travel somewhere, "whether in some remote village or in vast London, [...] in Germany, in France," etc?

7. Where does Dimmesdale go at the beginning of Chapter 12, and why?

8. What, according to the narrator, enlivened the public holiday with "some diversity of hue?"

9. How does Pearl decorate herself at the end of Chapter 18 differently from how she did in the woods when Hester met Chillingworth?

10. In Chapter 16, Hester changes her story to Pearl about the significance of the scarlet letter. What does she say about the letter in Chapter 16?

(see the answer keys)

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