Exploring the next chapters of the novel, we discussed how Hester Prynne's intended punishment , the scarlet "A", actually frees her from the greater punishment of hypocrisy and of having to pretend ,like all other members of Puritan society, that she is someone she is not. In this context, we highlighted one of the novel's themes of illusion vs reality, and noted how Hester 's having her "secret" revealed to the public actually brings her closer to others who seek her counsel as fellow ,but unrevealed, imperfect beings. We then examined Jonathan's Edward's sermon on sin, and Olivia identified numerous examples of figurative language and discussed how these rhetorical devices, along with repetition, accomplish the speaker's intent-to persuade . Last, I placed on the whiteboard the terms: illusion and allusion and discussed their separate meanings and provided an additional example from the novel of a literary allusion. I distributed our first literary essay question that we will work on in class by creating an outline, a thesis, and supporting examples from the novel. For homework, I assigned re-reading two pages from the novel that address the essay material,drafting a topic sentence , and completing a grammar and word usage exercise.