Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Roland Joffé’s screen adaptation contains insurmountable differences in comparison to the similarities. The characters hold the same names, live in the same town, worship the same God under the same religion, and experience the same controversy in both forms of media, but that concludes the resemblances. How the characters are developed, their reactions to events and challenges they face, and ultimately their deaths find new and unusual fates. In conclusion, the film follows an outline with brutal, bloodied deaths and a happy ending, whereas the novel reveals the weight each character must carry, and that these weights sometimes get in the way of the perfect ending.
