The correct answer is A) the sunlight symbolizes the light of Pearl compared to the darkness of her parents and their sin.
What is symbolic about Pearl playing in the sunlight of the forest in Chapter 16 of The Scarlet Letter is that the sunlight symbolizes the light of Pearl compared to the darkness of her parents and their sin.
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the novel "The Scarlet Letter." in 1850. The novel refers to the story of Hester Prynne, a woman he is looking to have a good life in the 1640s. The set is the Massachusetts Colony, where Puritans were very strict and did not accept the fact that Hester had had a daughter in an affair. The real drama of the novel starts in chapter 16, and the symbolism about Pearl playing in the sunlight of the forest in this chapter is that the sunlight symbolizes the light of Pearl compared to the darkness of her parents and their sin.