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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 Hester fling next to the brook?
(a) Her bonnet.
(b) Her scarlet letter.
(c) Dimmesdale's Bible.
(d) Chillingworth's herbs.

2. How does the narrator characterize Dimmesdale's sermon?
(a) The narrator disparages it.
(b) The narrator exhalts it.
(c) The narrator ignores it.
(d) The narrator neither praises nor diminshes it.

3. Who in the audience taunts Hester and Pearl at the appearance of Dimmesdale?
(a) Chillingworth.
(b) Hibbins.
(c) Bellingham.
(d) Brackett.

4. Where does Dimmesdale imagine a "scarlet token?"
(a) On his forehead.
(b) On Hester.
(c) On Pearl.
(d) On his chest.

5. Why, according to Pearl, does sunshine "run away and hide itself" from Hester?
(a) Because of the scarlet letter.
(b) Because of the foliage.
(c) Because of her long gray dress.
(d) Because of her fair skin.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whom does Dimmesdale set out to meet?

2. Where is Hester when Chillingworth leaves, "his gray beard almost" touching the ground?

3. In Chapter 19, how does Dimmesdale say Pearl looks?

4. Which of the following creatures is not mentioned while Pearl plays on the shore?

5. This group in the procession referred to in the title of Chapter 22 was showing "a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar"?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Chillingworth attempt to stop Hester and Pearl from joining Dimmesdale on the scaffold?

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

3. Why does Hawthorne describe Pearl, in Chapter 19, as a "living hieroglyphic."

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

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

6. What does Pearl do with the seaweed she finds, and what does it show about her as a character?

7. What kinds of thoughts occur to Dimmesdale when he sees a deacon on the way home in Chapter 20 and why?

8. How does the narrator describe the public officials in Chapter 22, many of whom were real historical figures (figures such as Bradstreet, Endicott, etc.)?

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

10. In Chapter 15, when Pearl asks Hester what the letter stands for, what does Hester reply?

(see the answer keys)

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