Final Prep: Hawthorne, Miller, Clemens, Crane The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawtorne takes place in the seventeenth century, New England colony of Massachusetts. Hester Prynne is the protagonist of the novel. She is an English woman and the wife of Roger Chillingworth. She is tried and condemned for her sin of adultery with Dimmesdale and charged to wear the scarlet letter, "A", an indication of adultery, on the bosom of her gown forever. Even though …showed first 75 words of 1441 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1441 total…finds it so confusing and frightening in its disorganization and noise that he runs. When he faces battle later, not only is he not afraid, he seems oblivious of the danger he is in. Both his bravery and his fright are responses to battle that he could not have known ahead of time. The real experience of warfare is that the soldier cannot predict the circumstances that will make him run or stand and fight.