Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne: The Sins of the Characters

"In Adam's fall, we sinned all."(Hall, 1)This quote from the New England primer much pertains to Nathaniel Hawthorne's characters in The Scarlet Letter. The Puritans were a people dedicated to improving themselves according to a certain set of principles that were exclusively Puritan. On the personal level, a Puritan would struggle to reach perfection by living out this system of values. If they did not succeed, as in Hester or Arthur Dimmesdale's cases, their retribution would be in the fact that they did not live up to the perfection in which they strived. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and the Puritan society characterized by the townspeople, all sinned. This story is a lesson of the result sin in the hearts of Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. …