In the novel The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne takes a very biased side against the Puritans he writes about. Hawthorne himself was a descendant of Puritan ancestors, and it seems that in many ways he still cannot escape the engulfing guilt of their crimes, as he never truly held their religion; "Hawthorne never felt he belonged to any such community of love and belief." From what I have learned about the Puritans, I believe they were good people, but they went so far off the deep end with their religion that they sacrificed their plain old human kindness and forgiveness. They just didn't understand that there were other things in life than their religion. Hawthorne's presentation of the Puritans throughout the novel The Scarlet Letter is not much different from my own opinion, though he leaves out even the slightest amount of good characteristics that they might possess. .
The Puritans had many hopes for their new settlement; they had left their homes in England in pursuit of their religious ideas. These Puritans were not dangerous revolutionists but plain citizens of England who sought out their religious Utopia in America. However, Hawthorne's presentation of their idealistic settlement is a harsh contrast to this. The prison and the cemetery are in prominent positions within the settlement as the reader is first introduced with the Puritan community. The emphasis of the prison is used to represent the rigorous enforcement of the laws and the inability to break free of them. The prison door itself also serves as a metaphor for the authority of religion, which will not tolerate deviance. In using the cemetery in context with the prison, it reveals that even the Puritans are only mortal human beings; they too can fail in their religious ways. Hawthorne uses this point to emphasize the fact that the strict Puritan way of life is doomed to failure; human nature can not be confined only suppressed.
