Scarlet Letter Review ?s

1.) In The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne outlines the sins and their outcomes of three different characters. The first of these is Hester. Her sin is commiting adultery, which means she slept with a man who is not her husband, while being married to another man. As a consequence to this sin, Hester has to withstand public humiliation and then she is labeled by a scarlet letter A that she must wear for the remainder of her life. In addition to the letter and the humiliation, she is graced with a constant reminder of her sin through her daughter who was the result of her sinful acts. The sin itself and its consequences change Hester's character completely.

The second character whose sin is shown to us is that of Reverend Dimmesdale. His sin is the same of Hester's with the addition of keeping his a secret instead of coming clean about it. Dimmesdale's consequences are different from Hester's consequences. The only people that know what he did are Hester, God, and himself. The guilt caused by the whole situation sends Dimmesdale's character into turmoil and causes his character to change. Finally it all becomes to unbearable and he reveals his mistake and it eventually leads to his death.

Finally we take a look at Chillingworth, whose sin was totally different from either Hester or Dimmesdale. Chillingworth's sin was his revenge seeking attitude, which Dimmesdale labeled as worse than both his or Hester's sin. Chillingworth was so obsessed with getting revenge on Dimmesdale that it became his only purpose in life and when Dimmesdale died he no longer had a purpose and so he dies not long after Dimmesdale. Two of these three cases of sin led to death.