Nearly every student who writes about The Scarlet Letter eventually writes about the letter A itself, and the resulting essays span an enormous range of quality despite covering the same symbol. Some essays simply catalog what the letter represents at different points in the novel, while others explain why Hawthorne chose to let its meaning shift and what that shift argues about identity, punishment, and social judgment. Grading fairly means being able to quickly tell these two kinds of essays apart.

The cataloging essay usually follows a predictable pattern: shame, then skill (through Hester's embroidery), then perhaps ability or even angel by the later chapters, listed in chronological order with a supporting quotation for each. This demonstrates comprehension but not necessarily analysis, since the student has not yet explained why the meaning shifts or what that shift reveals about the surrounding society rather than just about Hester herself.

The analytical essay goes a step further, arguing that the shift in meaning reflects something changing not in the letter itself but in how the community chooses to see Hester, which says more about collective judgment than individual redemption. This reframing, from "the letter's meaning changes" to "the town's willingness to reinterpret Hester changes," is the kind of move that separates a strong essay from a merely competent one.

A useful grading heuristic is to ask whether the essay's argument is really about the letter, or whether the letter is being used as a lens to argue something about Puritan society, identity, or judgment more broadly. Essays that treat the symbol as the endpoint of the analysis tend to score lower than essays that treat it as a tool for a larger claim.

Beyond the Letter: Other Symbols Worth Assigning

Because the letter A is so heavily analyzed, essays on this specific symbol are more likely to echo prior class discussion or outside sources than essays on less obvious symbols. Assigning or offering the scaffold, the rosebush outside the prison, the meteor, or Pearl's clothing as alternative symbolic focal points can produce more original student thinking, since these symbols receive less classroom emphasis by default and require students to build their own interpretation with less scaffolding.

• Distinguish essays that catalog a symbol's meanings from those that explain the shift
• Ask whether the symbol is the argument's endpoint or a lens for a larger claim
• Offer secondary symbols like the rosebush or meteor for more original analysis
• Reward essays that connect a symbol's meaning to community perception, not just character
• Flag symbolism essays that never move past straightforward identification

Handling the Rosebush as a Teaching Opportunity

The rosebush outside the prison door, mentioned in the novel's opening chapter, is a compact and often underused symbol that rewards close attention. Its placement immediately establishes a tension between harsh Puritan justice and unexpected natural beauty, and essays that trace this tension through the rest of the novel, connecting the rosebush to later moments of unexpected compassion or beauty, tend to demonstrate more sophisticated symbolic reading than the more common letter A essay.

Introducing this symbol explicitly as an option, alongside a brief in-class discussion of why Hawthorne might have placed it so early, gives students who want to write something less predictable a legitimate and well-supported path to do so.

Grading Consistency Across Different Symbol Choices

When students choose from a range of symbols rather than all writing about the same one, maintaining consistent grading standards becomes harder, since you cannot directly compare essays on the letter A against essays on the meteor using the same specific benchmarks. Grading against the underlying skill, does the essay explain why the symbol's meaning matters rather than just what it is, rather than against symbol-specific content knowledge, keeps the standard consistent regardless of which symbol a student chose.

A shared rubric focused on this underlying analytical skill, rather than a checklist of required observations about one specific symbol, works across the full range of symbolic choices without requiring a separate rubric for every possible topic.

Feedback That Pushes Cataloging Essays Toward Analysis

For students stuck at the cataloging level, the most useful feedback asks a direct question: why does this change happen, and what does it suggest beyond the character herself? This single question, repeated consistently across feedback on multiple drafts, often does more to push students toward analytical thinking than a longer written comment, since it gives them a specific next step rather than a general directive to "go deeper."

Building this question into a revision checklist that students apply to their own drafts before submission can catch and correct cataloging essays before they ever reach the grading stage.