With the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne becomes famous as the greatest writer living then in the United States and his reputation as a major American author has been on the increase ever since. Hawthorne uses the symbolism so skillful that it enhances the artistic effects of his work greatly. This paper analyses the symbolism in this novel mainly in the following aspects：the changing symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter A and many objects that are described in the novel to make the symbolism clear to the readers.