The Scarlet Letter is brimming with many sins and sinners as Nathaniel Hawthorne attempts to portray throughout the story. Hawthorne’s main characters in the book have committed major wrongs doing in the eyes of the Puritans. The main characters include Hester, Chillingworth, demmesdale and pearl, who has yet to commit a sin. Also, a part of this chaos are the townspeople who’s Hippocratic verbal and physical actions influence the lives of Hester and her daughter, Pearl, in negative ways. Although the society, and many of the characters commit sins, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempts to convey the trail of thoughts that The Scarlet Letter is about Sinners; not sins.

Though, the book is filled with wrong doings from hypocrisy, lying, betrayal and even adultery, the author tends to be leaning more towards telling about the sinners and their perspectives about the occurring situations, rather than focusing on just the sins they have brought upon themselves. It is evident that Hester committed

However, worse than the townspeople’s hypocrisy is Chillingworth’s sinful ways. Nathaniel Hawthorne considers him to be the most malicious due to his actions. His actions of betraying, lying, and emotionally draining Demmesdale until his very death, spoke louder than his verbal threats. Hawthorne refers to him as the “black man,” which is the worst reference one could have been made to at the time of the Puritan rule in Massachusetts. Chillingworth justifies the author’s purpose of considering him the most “evil” of all the four major sinners in the Scarlet Letter by feeding off of Dimmesdale’s vitality to balance his own sadistic ways.

Demmesdale, on the other hand, had his own struggles and inner demons that haunted and tormented him until his deathbed. He was the secret lover of Hester, and the father of pearl. This meant that he should have been accused of adultery as well as Hester, but he was too cowardly to admit to his wrong doings. Towards the end of the book when he admits to his sins and shows the

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