In preparation for constructing our first literary essay, we today analyzed the parallels between the author and Hester Prynne as reflected in the novel's introduction,"The Custom House" . The author and Hester remain drawn to the locality of their "sin" as a means of expatiation and each uses "art" as its medium. We further examined the nature of Hester's sin as other than a religious or moral infraction. We will spend some more time tomorrow discussing the Puritan sermon of Jonathan Edwards,but today I placed on the whiteboard an ACT type exercise focusing on identifying the speaker's intent or purpose. Last, we reviewed Olivia's ACT/SAT practice exercises focused on agreement and verb tenses. For homework I assigned reading pages 61-66 of the novel and a grammar /word usage exercise from our ACT/SAT material.