The Village and Forest as Symbols Settings in books have a great impact on the characters and events that develop in a novel. Setting is what makes up the characters, it is their surroundings that they encounter and interact with. Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes symbolism to express certain points or themes to the reader by the use of setting. He chose the market place and the forest as settings used to symbolically develop his portrait of …showed first 75 words of 1011 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1011 total…in the novel. It is one element in the novel that can bring joy, sadness, freedom, and evil to the characters, but the forest can also bring truth and revelation. The two settings help develop a story that shows sin and passion in a religious society that is based on restraint and law. Two religious people in the community commit the sin of adultery, with one publicly punished and the other self-inflicted until the end.