The Scarlet Letter Summary - The Custom House

    The customhouse gives us a background on the nameless narrator of the story and it provides us with some information about the how the author feels about the custom house building itself. The author feels that the customs building is a run-down place that is situated on a rotten wharf in a half-finished building.
    The narrator tries to find amusement at the customhouse at Salem that barely any ship goes to. The narrator finds some documents in the unoccupied part of the second story of the building and he finds a scarlet, gold-embroidered piece of cloth in the shape of the letter “A.”
    The narrator finds interest in the story behind the letter and also about events behind the letter. He finds a previous customhouse worker that recorded the history in a book. The book then becomes the main body of "The Scarlet Letter."