In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses significant themes and Puritan ideals, such as the concept of sin. In the first chapter, Hawthorne indicates that the colony set land aside for the cemetery and the prison. This shows that the colonists knew there would be serious sin that required punishment, and that every person would eventually die and would need a cemetery. They came to the realization that death and sin were inevitable. This is like Puritan beliefs, which says that all people are born sinners because of Adam and Eve’s early sin. The scenes at the prison and the scaffold are held in wide open, in public places. This is another Puritan belief; that sin should be sought out and brought out in the open so that it can be punished visibly. Therefore it teaches the rest of the community a lesson.

This new society was afraid that their community would fall apart "in a land where iniquity is searched out and punished" if they did not seek out those individuals that were immoral in their eyes. Their fear of sin and wickedness drove them in their quest to do what they felt was right. The society had to protect itsel

Hester shows bravery by openly showing that she still loves Dimmesdale, even though she knows that in doing so, she is sinning again. She is trying to get Dimmesdale to escape from the community of Puritans, because she believes they are brainwashed and they can’t see life other than their Puritan ways. She also wants to go live somewhere else, because she thinks that they have already paid for their sins.

The decaying garden can also be a symbol of sin. Its need of care suggests that Bellingham isn’t capable of handling the community and their troubles. The fertility of the cabbages and the pumpkins implies difference between ideals and the essentials in life. The garden was supposed to be visually pleasing to the eye, but it ends up only producing food and nothing more. The only beautiful object that grows in the garden is a rosebush, which clearly compares the ideals to sin, because both good and bad things can result from it.

Dimmesdale and Hester reflect on their mistake every day, ever since Hester’s part of the crime had been discovered, and they try to resolve and overcome it. The Puritan leaders, such as the Governor, see mortal trials and tribulations as difficult obstacles on the pathway to heaven. Therefore they see sin as a threat to the well-being of the people and the community as a whole. When Hester sins, she gets shunned badly by her fellow Puritans. In this novel, Puritan society is inactive, and there is so much two-facedness and hypocrisy within the community, but Hester and Dimmesdale's sin shows that sin can lead to understanding other people and learning from mistakes.

Hester is slowly realizing that the sin she committe

Some topics in this essay:
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