Symbol of the forest

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, life is centered on a Puritan society. In this society, people are not allowed to express their thoughts and feelings. Every human being needs the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings; otherwise the emotions become bottled up until they begin to hurt a person. In this Puritan town, they were not allowed to do that. Luckily, for the main characters, Hawthorne has created a forest to give …

…Hawthorne created the forest to give characters a place to escape, to express their emotions and beliefs. The forest was a place where ideas and feeling could flow endlessly. The forest played an important role in the novel; it is the center of socialization free from the Puritans rules. It provided a "security" for the characters when they needed privacy, symbolized Pearl and represented evil to people who didn’t know the forest very well.