Chapter Sixteen
Entry Twenty-Seven
After Pearl stoppes catching sunshine she asks her mother for telling her a story. But she doesn't want to hear just any story, no, she wants to hear something about the Black Man.
“How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him,—a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to every body that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood. And then he sets his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?”By giving her mother such a detailed description of what she wants to hear, it actually becomes redundant to tell her a story about it. Pearl just needs a reason to talk about the Black Man.
Meant by the term The Black Man is Roger Chillingworth, unseen striking terror into people's hearts.
The book he carries around in Pearls story is his pacts he makes. She exactly describes the situation when Hester promised him to never reveal who Roger Chillingworth really is. She signed an invisible agreement which she never dared to break. The question whether her mother had ever met him seems already answered by Pearl herself. She knows it. Basically, she already revealed everyone's hidden secret, she's only missing their relation and context.
Nice!
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