In the first chapter of The Scarlet Letter the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, describes the location of the story. One of the main things he describes is the prison; which is built on, ‘virgin soil’ (pg. 45 Line: 8-10). He calls the prison ‘the black flower of civilized society’ (pg. 45 Line: 27).
A prison is supposed to be an evil place where prisoners who have broken the law in horrible ways are supposed to go. If you were ask someone to think of these people, I’m sure they would think of them in grey and black prison uniforms that are very depressing, which is how Hawthorne describes them ‘A throng of men, in sad-colored garments…and studded with iron spikes’ (pg. 45 Lines: 1-5). That explains why Hawthorne used the word ‘Black’ in the quote, ‘A black flower of civilized society’, but why did Hawthorne call the jail a flower? I believe he chose this because, the Puritans’ idea of their new colony was a utopia. The prison is like the black sheep of the family (colony), the only place in and around Boston, where the founders couldn’t hide the badness of their creation. A different interpretation might be that Hawthorne chose the flower because it grew because of the society. The society is to blame for the fact that the world needs buildings like this.
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