The Scarlet Letter

            The reasons that people sin has eluded many for centuries, however, the effects of sin are widely known and experienced by many. In an attempt to portray both the cause and the effects of committing a sin, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes the book The Scarlet Letter. He sets the book in seventeenth-century Boston, then a strict Puritan society, where a lady, Hester Prynne, has committed the grave sin of adultery. Hawthorne observes that when a sinner sins, not only does the sinner reverts to an uncontrollable feeling of being punished, but also the people surrounding the sinner have a feeling of being victimized. Through Hester, Hawthorne determines to convey that sin causes suffering to the sinner, to other sinners, and to the innocent.
             Hawthorne believes that sinners suffer intolerable punishments when they sin; the punishments are inflicted both by the sinners themselves and from external sources. Hester displays both modes of punishment when she commits adultery and finds it unbearable to live with it. She feels as if though "all of nature knew of [her sin]"(76) where "the leaves of trees whisper[s] the dark story among themselves[,]. . . . the summer breeze murmur[s] about it . . . [and] the wintry blast shriek[s] it aloud"(76). The town does not give her much support either; instead, the town punishes her to wear the letter "A" on her chest for every person whom she meets will know that she has committed the grave sin and to feel "unutterably grievous to be borne"(65). However, one should note that Hester need not have gone through all those punishments if she had not married without love. She marries to Roger Prynne, who is much older than her, without courtship or affection of any kind. If she would have married for love, she would have been satisfied with her relationship and thus will not have commit adultery nor suffer "a pang, a sting, [and] an ever-recurring agony"(102) of her sin.