Punishment For Sin In The Scarlet Letter

Punishment for sin was a big deal in Puritan beliefs. The Scarlet Letter was written in 1850 by Nathaniel Hawthorne and was a classic American novel in the 19th century. The story was set in a Puritan community in Boston, Massachusetts during the 17th century. The story is about a woman who committed adultery and was punished for it while others got away with their sins in the moment, but they caught up to them in the end. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale’s suffering overshadowed all of the other characters’ pain and agony. Hester Prynne, a main character in the story, suffered in many ways throughout the course of the story. She was outcast, scolded, and treated awfully by everyone in the town of Boston. The story opens as Hester is being publicly humiliated for her sin. She is standing up on the scaffold with her scarlet letter that represented her sin across her chest. People are yelling, throwing things at her and her child, and even yelling at the officials to sentence her to death. After being released from prison, she was outcast by the people, so she went to live in a cottage along the sea shore. The cottage was old and abandoned and had no signs of life anywhere around it. Every time she had to go to town, people would …show more content…
This revenge turns him into a devil like figure throughout the story though. Once Chillingworth finds out Dimmesdale is the father, he plays mind games with him, and makes him go crazy. But the biggest way that Chillingworth suffers is that he loses his wife. He feels lonely and like he has no one who loves him. Hester finds out about his mind games with Dimmesdale and breaks his promise to keep his identity a secret. She tells Dimmesdale who Chillingworth really is because of how much she loves him which shows Chillingworth that he will never win her