Theme Of Punishment In The Scarlet Letter

Many people in this world run away from the punishment of their wrongdoings. However, one cannot escape the punishment. Whether it be publicly or privately, punishment will always come. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter explores the themes of sin, hypocrisy, and justice with the characters of Hester Prynne, who was unfaithful to her husband and bore a baby girl named Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale, who is secretly the father of Pearl. Pearl and Roger Chillingworth, Hester Prynne’s husband before she came to Boston, work to purify Hester and Dimmesdale in the book by being scourges to show the fact that one cannot escape from the retributions of sin until one has received appropriate punishment. Roger Chillingworth is one scourge in this book

Chillingworth slowly hints at knowing what Dimmesdale has done by saying things like “They [herbs] grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he has done better to confess during his lifetime” (131). He is provoking Dimmesdale to confess his sin, but Dimmesdale goes on to defend the man who did not confess. This purpose of this conversation is to show Dimmesdale how he could end up if keeps his secret to himself and persuade him to admit it. Dimmesdale shows no sign of confessing the sin. By doing these type of actions, Chillingworth wears down Dimmesdale’s mental and physical health. Chillingworth knows his methods are working to punish him: “but it was with the constant shadow of my presence,... and who had grown to exist only by the perpetual poison of the direst revenge!...A mortal man...has become a fiend for his especial torment (174). Dimmesdale is suffering a significant amount more with Chillingworth’s torment than he alone could. Without Chillingworth, Dimmesdale could forget about his sin, and only