Scarlet Letter 1

“A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods…”

This sentence is describing the puritan people. Hawthorne is not just giving you an idea of what these people are like, he is giving you his ideas about them. He describes these people as plain and all similar, all the men were bearded and wore gray and colorless clothing. He does a good job of negatively describing these people without noticeably saying that he doesn’t like them.