The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a book depicting the struggle of a woman who is spared death after committing adultery in a strict puritan society. The woman, Hester Prynne, was spared death only for the reason to make an example to the rest of the community. Throughout the book you can see the theme of how sin changes lives appear in almost every chapter and is an important driving factor behind the plot. This theme is shown through the actions of the three main characters: Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.
These three characters act in this novel as the personification of sin in three different types of sin. A different sin by each of the main characters. The sin made by Hester Prynne is one that is recognized by most, including the bible, but punished by few, including the puritan society that Hester lived in. Hester committing adultery changed her life forever, her life would not ever be the same as she was forced by law to wear the scarlet “A” on her breast for the rest of the life. Her sin also resulted in the birth of her daughter Pearl, who was described in the book as a rose from the prison, “… he had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the wild roses that grew by the prison door,” (63).
Pearl was the product of Hester’s sin and Hester had to also live with Pearl for the rest of her life. Pearl was not necessarily a bad thing though, she was a light and companion in Hester’s previously dim and lonely life, Pearl helped to provide fulfillment and a better side to her sin. After she had committed the sin, she did not try to rectify the sin, she instead decided to try and keep her affair with Arthur Dimmesdale alive and move away to Europe in search of a new life.
Hester Prynne is a bad example to follow but is a good example of how one sin can affect you for the rest of your life, more than often in negative ways. Hester’s sin did not only affect her own life forever, it also affected the life of Arthur Dimmesdale, with whom she committed adultery and bore a son. Arthur Dimmesdale, after committing adultery, also committed a sin by being a coward and abandoning Hester and Pearl after Hester had been accused of the crime.
He would not confess to his sin but he was still on the scaffold accusing Hester, trying to keep her from saying that it was he who committed the Adultery, “‘She will not speak! ” murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. “Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman’s heart! She will not speak! ” (21). Arthur Dimmesdale is not confessing to his sin and is being eaten alive from the inside out until he finally confesses to his sin and then he falls over dead for unknown causes.
It is left to be assumed that he died because that he was only being kept alive to confess his sin, then his reason to live was gone so he died. He was also to scared to be seen in public with Hester and Pearl because he was a coward, so the only place he could meet with them, his family, was in the middle of the woods where no one would see them. The sin committed by Arthur Dimmesdale affected and eventually led to the end of his life. The final character, Roger Chillingworth, committed a sin that was the product of the adultery committed by both Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne.
His sin was that he tried to torture Dimmesdale and Hester out of revenge, because he was married to Hester before she committed adultery with Dimmesdale. He had planned to keep the secret of Hester but torture the both of them in the process, “The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, n this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy,” (41).
He managed to torture Dimmesdale to the point that that was what his whole life focus was about. Chillingworth had become so consumed by his sin and the thought of revenge, that he became very sick and horrid looking. After Arthur Dimmesdale confesses his sin and then died, Chillingworth died soon after for also unknown causes. This is led to believe that the only reason he was still living was to torture Dimmesdale and hester.
The sin of Roger Chillingworth affected his life to the point that when he could no longer sin, he had nothing left to do but to die. Sin is never a good act to do but if taken to the extreme can ruin lives and in some cases even cause death. Throughout the book you can see the theme of how sin changes lives appear in almost every chapter and is an important driving factor behind the plot. This theme for the book is best shown by the main characters Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. The personification of sin by these character shows one of the strongest themes of this book.
