Theme Of Punishment In Scarlet Letter

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The book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is constructed of a Puritan’s lifestyle and individuals who have gone against the life. The Puritans judicial system remained what appeared to be a punitive cycle for biblical erroneous doings that the townspeople have committed and gone against God. A few of the instances of these iniquities are adultery, lying, sin, etc. The Puritans believed that God had made a special covenant with them and that they were to live dutifully to scripture. Puritanism is a stringent way of living where the people separated themselves from the Church of England wanting to purify the church. They had boisterous judgments that the people in today’s age would not understand, because of the punishments or the …show more content…
In the book when Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the pillory he begins by saying that it was “an instrument discipline so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, me thinks…more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame.” (The Scarlet Letter,43). The main theme of punishment throughout the whole story of Hester Prynne is public humiliation, hers being when she must openly wear a scarlet “A” sewn upon her chest to show that she was an adulterer. During the scene, which Hester is following through her punishment the governor, magistrates, and elders looked down upon her while she stood with a proud shameful look that was raised above the disapproving audience below her (Korobkin, 426). This fate of Hester is reoccurring throughout all the book whether it be the letter or her little Pearl. In the book her sentence is described as “stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom” (The Scarlet Letter, 44). In many ways, Nathaniel Hawthorne expertly described the Puritan’s lifestyle of crime
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