Walking through the halls with various letters pinned to their clothing, juniors in Tia Barth’s Honors American Literature class emulated the main character of Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter by displaying a personal flaw on their chest.

In Hawthorne’s novel, protagonist Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet ‘A’ for adultery on her clothing to publicize her sin to the rest of the townspeople. In the 17th century Puritan town setting, Hester’s scarlet letter is a source of shame and the cause of her isolation.

Students in Barth’s classes crafted their own letter to represent a negative aspect of themselves, using different fabrics, drawings, and materials to decorate it according to the trait. Examples included an ‘E’ for “ego” crafted from reflective material to look like a mirror, an ‘I’ for “indecisive” with question marks covering the letter, and a mule drawn in the shape of an ‘S’ for “stubborn.”

Barth originally conceived the idea from a Los Altos High School student she tutored a few years ago; the project was an assignment for his English class, and the idea intrigued her.

“The goal was two-fold,” she said in an email response. “First, to get the students to think about how shape, font, color, material and other visual elements can work symbolically to convey an idea. Second, to encourage students to consider how meaning is assigned to or layered upon a symbol, both by the creator of the symbol and by those who encounter it.”

The juniors wore their letters for two days; on the first day, they were not allowed to tell others what it stood for, but on the second day they could reveal the meaning. In addition, after two days, they wrote a paragraph reflecting on their experiences.

“I thought it was really interesting, especially the fact that we didn’t tell what the letter stood for on the first day, so they had to kind of guess your letter based on what they know about you,” Zareen Choudhury (11) said.

Although the students’ letters did not cause their peers to scorn or isolate them as it did in Hester Prynne’s case, they drew curiosity from those in other grades and classes.

“A lot of people asked what it stood for, but there were a lot of other people wearing it too, so it was kind of like a game,” Monica Kumaran (11) said.

Barth felt that the activity was moderately successful in allowing students to explore the deeper meanings in illustration of symbols.

“Many students were thoughtful and specific in choosing visual detail to convey their ideas, and many did find that other people created meanings of their own for the letter the student wore,” she said in an email response.

Although Barth did not intend to elicit a strong emotional response from her students, she thought that many of them partially felt the self-consciousness expressed by Hester throughout the novel.