1. Sin and Retribution

2.  Sin - An immoral act considered to be a transgression
against divine law.
 Adultery and Revenge.
 Three Characters – Hester Prynne, Arthur
Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth
 Hester and Dimmesdale – Adultery
 Chillingworth - Revenge

3.  Hester – Unfaithful to her husband.
 “Yonder woman, Sir, as you know is the wife of a
certain learned man, English by birth……Being left
to her own misguidance...”.
 Hester and her child contrasted with mother mary and
baby Jesus – ch 2 – making them the symbol of sin.
 Dimmesdale – Coveting another man’s wife – a priest
of holy orders.
 Chillingworth – His unquenchable desire for
revenge.

4.  Hester - Punished in public – The scarlet letter, 3 hrs
on the scaffold and secluded for the rest of her life.
 “….SCARLET LETTER….It had the effect of a
spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with
humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by
herself.”
 The child, Pearl – “ She is my happiness! – she is my
torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life!
Pearl punishes me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet
letter only capable of being loved, and so endowed
with a million-fold the power of retribution for my
sin?”

5.  Dimmesdale – Punished by the very torment he feels
in his soul.
 “He bears no infamy wrought into his garment, as
thou dost: but I shall read it in his heart.”
 “What can thy silence do for him- yea, compel him,
as it were- to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath
granted thee an open ignominy,…….Take heed how
thou deniest him – who, perchance, hath not the
courage to grasp it for himself - the bitter, but
wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!”
 Final retribution – his confession.
 Hester and Dimmesdale did not have a “sinless
conscience”.

6.  Chillingworth – the change in him
 “ A mortal man, with once a heart, ( Chillingworth)
has become a fiend for his( Dimmesdale’s) especial
torment!”.

7.  Hester and Dimmesdale – shown as saintly towards the
end
 Reason – Accept their punishment - their untiring
endeavour to seek God’s forgiveness and to life a good
life as much as possible.
 Hester – “ I hear good things of you on all hands”
 Dimmesdale – hailed as a great clergyman by all the
people in the town.
 Chillingworth- existed only by “the perpetual poison of
the direst revenge”- hence treated as the personification
of the Devil himself – After the death of Dimmesdale he
is so reduced “ his vital and intellectual force” deserted
him and he died within a year.

8.  The guilty – punished.
 “In the view of infinite purity, were are all sinners
alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest among us
has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern
more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and
repudiate ( reject) more utterly the phantom ( vision
or illusion) of human merit, which would looks
aspiringly upwards.”