SAT Reading & Writing Practice Set - The Scarlet Letter (Adapted)
On a summer morning in seventeenth-century Boston, Hester Prynne stood upon the wooden scaffold
with her infant in her arms and a scarlet letter “A” blazing on her breast, while the town’s elders and their
families gathered below to look up at her. The Puritan magistrates had ordered that the letter be worn
as a visible record of her adultery, a permanent warning sewn into cloth, and Hester knew that the
shuttered windows and crowded market-place would keep the story alive long after the murmur of that
day’s judgment had faded. Yet the child she held had not been conceived in cold rebellion against God
or law, but in a moment of love she had never been able wholly to regret, even as she acknowledged it
as sin. When the assembled authorities pressed her to name the child’s father, Hester’s refusal left her
alone in the public eye, bearing both the visible stain of the letter and the unspoken knowledge that the
sin it marked had been shared by another who remained hidden in the crowd. (Hawthorne, 1850)
Among those watching, though the town did not suspect it, stood two men whose fates were already
bound to hers. The first was Arthur Dimmesdale, the young minister whose pale face and eloquent
sermons had made him a spiritual guide to many of the people now staring at Hester; he spoke to her
from the balcony, urging her, in the name of her soul’s health, to speak and ease her conscience. His
words, outwardly pious, were accompanied by the gesture—already habitual—of pressing his hand
against his heart, as if some pain lay coiled there that no physician had yet diagnosed. The second was
her long-absent husband, now calling himself Roger Chillingworth, who had returned from captivity to
find his wife on the scaffold and had chosen, instead of announcing himself, to adopt the guise of a
physician and “read” the secrets of the town. In that early scene, without any formal declaration, the
pattern was set: Hester marked and half-redeemed by open shame, Dimmesdale honored and inwardly
eaten by concealed guilt, and Chillingworth moving quietly between them with the cold patience of a
man who intends to feed on another’s hidden wound. (Hawthorne, 1850)
Years later, on a night when most of Boston slept and the marketplace lay empty, Dimmesdale walked
alone to the same scaffold and climbed the steps that Hester had once mounted under the midday sun.
The minister whom the people called saintly had come to feel their praise as something sharper than
rebuke, because every kind word reminded him of the deception that underlay their reverence. Standing
in the darkness, he stretched his arms along the rail as if to test how much of Hester’s punishment he
could bear in secret, crying out softly to the empty square and almost hoping someone might hear.
When Hester and Pearl, returning from Governor Winthrop’s deathbed, came upon him and took their
places at his side, the three formed for an instant the family that the town had never acknowledged; a
meteor burned across the sky, and some later swore that its trail shaped itself into a letter, though each
onlooker read in it what his own conscience supplied. Dimmesdale, feeling Pearl’s small hand in his
and seeing Hester’s badge faintly glimmer in the starlight, promised that some day—not then, but “in
the great judgment-day”—he would stand with them in full view of all eyes. (Hawthorne, 1850)
That promise was not literally kept, yet it was not wholly broken. On Election Day, after preaching a
sermon that many said was the most moving ever heard from the Boston pulpit, Dimmesdale left the
church pale and exhausted, as if he had emptied the last strength of his soul into his words. While the
crowd still murmured in admiration, he turned suddenly toward the scaffold and, summoning Hester
and Pearl with a gesture that brooked no refusal, mounted the platform in the bright afternoon.
Chillingworth hurried after him, warning in hushed urgency that by exposing himself Dimmesdale would
slip beyond his “care,” but the very desperation of that warning revealed how much the physician’s
power depended on the minister’s silence. Before the assembled town, Dimmesdale declared his share
, in Hester’s sin, bared a mark long hidden on his own chest, and acknowledged Pearl as his child; then,
his confession finished, he died in Hester’s arms. In the years that followed, Chillingworth withered
quickly without the secret he had built his life around, Pearl was left with an inheritance that allowed
her to seek another fate, and Hester—who returned to Boston to wear the letter by her own choosing—
came to be sought out by troubled souls, as if her long journey through shame and partial reconciliation
had given her a knowledge that those still untouched by scandal could not offer. (Hawthorne, 1850)
(Adapted from the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. the way public rituals, private guilt, and vengeful curiosity intersect around Hester,
Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth.
B. the legal procedures used by Puritan courts to prosecute adultery cases.
C. the economic development of seventeenth-century Boston as a trading center.
D. the childhood experiences that shaped Hester Prynne’s personality.
2. Across the four paragraphs, the scaffold most strongly functions as
A. a convenient place for the town to gather for markets and celebrations.
B. a recurring stage on which different combinations of exposure and concealment reveal
changing relations among sin, confession, and judgment.
C. a piece of unused architecture that gradually loses all meaning.
D. a symbol only of civil authority, unrelated to religious concerns.
3. The first paragraph’s depiction of Hester’s refusal to name her lover primarily suggests that she
A. believes that no man shares any responsibility for her situation.
B. chooses to accept public punishment rather than betray the man who shares her guilt.
C. hopes the magistrates will forget to ask her again.
D. does not understand the question being asked.
4. Taken together, the first two paragraphs present Dimmesdale chiefly as a character who
A. is unaware of Hester’s suffering.
B. tries to use his influence to lessen Hester’s punishment.
C. outwardly performs the role of spiritual guide while inwardly tormented by a secret
connection to the very sin he denounces.
D. has already confessed his part in Hester’s transgression.
5. Which idea is most clearly supported by the passage’s account of Dimmesdale’s secret night
visit to the scaffold?
A. Private self-punishment cannot fully substitute for open confession.
B. Physical suffering is always worse than emotional suffering.
C. Dreams are more important than waking actions.
D. Chillingworth is unaware of Dimmesdale’s inner turmoil.
On a summer morning in seventeenth-century Boston, Hester Prynne stood upon the wooden scaffold
with her infant in her arms and a scarlet letter “A” blazing on her breast, while the town’s elders and their
families gathered below to look up at her. The Puritan magistrates had ordered that the letter be worn
as a visible record of her adultery, a permanent warning sewn into cloth, and Hester knew that the
shuttered windows and crowded market-place would keep the story alive long after the murmur of that
day’s judgment had faded. Yet the child she held had not been conceived in cold rebellion against God
or law, but in a moment of love she had never been able wholly to regret, even as she acknowledged it
as sin. When the assembled authorities pressed her to name the child’s father, Hester’s refusal left her
alone in the public eye, bearing both the visible stain of the letter and the unspoken knowledge that the
sin it marked had been shared by another who remained hidden in the crowd. (Hawthorne, 1850)
Among those watching, though the town did not suspect it, stood two men whose fates were already
bound to hers. The first was Arthur Dimmesdale, the young minister whose pale face and eloquent
sermons had made him a spiritual guide to many of the people now staring at Hester; he spoke to her
from the balcony, urging her, in the name of her soul’s health, to speak and ease her conscience. His
words, outwardly pious, were accompanied by the gesture—already habitual—of pressing his hand
against his heart, as if some pain lay coiled there that no physician had yet diagnosed. The second was
her long-absent husband, now calling himself Roger Chillingworth, who had returned from captivity to
find his wife on the scaffold and had chosen, instead of announcing himself, to adopt the guise of a
physician and “read” the secrets of the town. In that early scene, without any formal declaration, the
pattern was set: Hester marked and half-redeemed by open shame, Dimmesdale honored and inwardly
eaten by concealed guilt, and Chillingworth moving quietly between them with the cold patience of a
man who intends to feed on another’s hidden wound. (Hawthorne, 1850)
Years later, on a night when most of Boston slept and the marketplace lay empty, Dimmesdale walked
alone to the same scaffold and climbed the steps that Hester had once mounted under the midday sun.
The minister whom the people called saintly had come to feel their praise as something sharper than
rebuke, because every kind word reminded him of the deception that underlay their reverence. Standing
in the darkness, he stretched his arms along the rail as if to test how much of Hester’s punishment he
could bear in secret, crying out softly to the empty square and almost hoping someone might hear.
When Hester and Pearl, returning from Governor Winthrop’s deathbed, came upon him and took their
places at his side, the three formed for an instant the family that the town had never acknowledged; a
meteor burned across the sky, and some later swore that its trail shaped itself into a letter, though each
onlooker read in it what his own conscience supplied. Dimmesdale, feeling Pearl’s small hand in his
and seeing Hester’s badge faintly glimmer in the starlight, promised that some day—not then, but “in
the great judgment-day”—he would stand with them in full view of all eyes. (Hawthorne, 1850)
That promise was not literally kept, yet it was not wholly broken. On Election Day, after preaching a
sermon that many said was the most moving ever heard from the Boston pulpit, Dimmesdale left the
church pale and exhausted, as if he had emptied the last strength of his soul into his words. While the
crowd still murmured in admiration, he turned suddenly toward the scaffold and, summoning Hester
and Pearl with a gesture that brooked no refusal, mounted the platform in the bright afternoon.
Chillingworth hurried after him, warning in hushed urgency that by exposing himself Dimmesdale would
slip beyond his “care,” but the very desperation of that warning revealed how much the physician’s
power depended on the minister’s silence. Before the assembled town, Dimmesdale declared his share
, in Hester’s sin, bared a mark long hidden on his own chest, and acknowledged Pearl as his child; then,
his confession finished, he died in Hester’s arms. In the years that followed, Chillingworth withered
quickly without the secret he had built his life around, Pearl was left with an inheritance that allowed
her to seek another fate, and Hester—who returned to Boston to wear the letter by her own choosing—
came to be sought out by troubled souls, as if her long journey through shame and partial reconciliation
had given her a knowledge that those still untouched by scandal could not offer. (Hawthorne, 1850)
(Adapted from the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. the way public rituals, private guilt, and vengeful curiosity intersect around Hester,
Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth.
B. the legal procedures used by Puritan courts to prosecute adultery cases.
C. the economic development of seventeenth-century Boston as a trading center.
D. the childhood experiences that shaped Hester Prynne’s personality.
2. Across the four paragraphs, the scaffold most strongly functions as
A. a convenient place for the town to gather for markets and celebrations.
B. a recurring stage on which different combinations of exposure and concealment reveal
changing relations among sin, confession, and judgment.
C. a piece of unused architecture that gradually loses all meaning.
D. a symbol only of civil authority, unrelated to religious concerns.
3. The first paragraph’s depiction of Hester’s refusal to name her lover primarily suggests that she
A. believes that no man shares any responsibility for her situation.
B. chooses to accept public punishment rather than betray the man who shares her guilt.
C. hopes the magistrates will forget to ask her again.
D. does not understand the question being asked.
4. Taken together, the first two paragraphs present Dimmesdale chiefly as a character who
A. is unaware of Hester’s suffering.
B. tries to use his influence to lessen Hester’s punishment.
C. outwardly performs the role of spiritual guide while inwardly tormented by a secret
connection to the very sin he denounces.
D. has already confessed his part in Hester’s transgression.
5. Which idea is most clearly supported by the passage’s account of Dimmesdale’s secret night
visit to the scaffold?
A. Private self-punishment cannot fully substitute for open confession.
B. Physical suffering is always worse than emotional suffering.
C. Dreams are more important than waking actions.
D. Chillingworth is unaware of Dimmesdale’s inner turmoil.
