Interpreting The Theme Of Sin In The Scarlett Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In The Scarlet Letter, there are many scenes that are important to the plot and help reveal the story’s theme of sin and its consequences. The story is presented differently than most novels, however, Hawthorne presents the story as an omniscient feeling towards all characters, rather than a chronological explanation in order to show a unity of mood. Therefore, many of these important scenes do not focus on one character, but relate the actions of the four major characters together. There are five important scenes in the book that display the story’s important message: the interrogation at the prison, the governor’s decision for Hester’s custody, the midnight meeting on the scaffold, Hester and Dimmesdale’s rendezvous in the forest, and
Within chapter seven and eight, the townspeople want Hester to lose custody of Pearl, whether it benefits Hester or Pearl’s religious purity. Consequently, Hester goes to the house of Governor Bellingham to request to keep custody. While there, Reverend Wilson and Dimmesdale, as well as Bellingham and Chillingworth hold “an informal trial of her case” (Cowley, 14). To prove Hester’s responsibility as a parent in a religious society, Reverend Wilson asks Pearl about who her creator is. In response “the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door” (Hawthorne, 123). As a result, the group of men decide that Hester is unfit to look after Pearl, even though Hester decides she would rather die than lose custody. Towards the end of the scene, Dimmesdale speaks on Hester’s behalf stating “God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements… is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child?” (Hawthorne, 125). At the end of the scene, Pearl and Dimmesdale have a gentle reaction with a kiss on her