1Public shame versus private guilt
Hester's sin is dragged into daylight on the scaffold, and the exposure lets her live—she wears the letter, pays the penance, and the letter comes to mean 'Able' to many townspeople. Dimmesdale hides the same sin, and the hiding corrodes him: he scourges himself, fasts, keeps vigils, and grows sicker while his sermons grow more powerful, because guilt gives him sympathy with all sinners. Chillingworth, sinning in secret against a sleeping man, becomes more devilish in appearance. The narrator's moral at the end is 'Be true! Be true! Be true!'
Characters:Hester PrynneArthur DimmesdaleRoger Chillingworth
2The cruelty of legalism
The Puritans punish a woman for life over one act, and the crowd's women—one young matron advocating branding or death—think the punishment too light. Hester does needlework for the governor, charity for the poor who scorn her, and endures preaching in the streets. The town's response never softens into welcome; even as the letter comes to mean 'Able,' the townspeople still scorn her. Her exclusion forces her to speculate that the whole system of society must be torn down and rebuilt, and that her sin, paid for by penance, will not keep her from heaven.
Characters:Hester Prynne
3Revenge that devours the avenger
Chillingworth tells Hester he has wronged her, having married her when she was young and hopeful while he was old and deformed, and that between them the scale hangs fairly balanced. But he chooses to find the child's father and vows revenge. He lodges with Dimmesdale as his physician, probes his heart like a miner searching for treasure, and delights in the wound he finds. Over seven years his face grows uglier and more devilish. When Dimmesdale finally confesses and dies, Chillingworth kneels and cries that the man has escaped him, and he dies within a year.
Characters:Hester PrynneArthur DimmesdaleRoger Chillingworth
4Nature against the Puritan city
The novel sets the sad-colored town against living things: the wild rosebush by the prison door, offered as a 'sweet moral blossom'; the forest where Hester and Dimmesdale can finally speak the truth; the sunshine that floods Hester when she drops the letter. In town, the letter is law; in the forest, Hester removes it, and nature seems to bless the escape plan. Pearl, wild and elfish, says her mother plucked her off the wild rose bush by the prison door. Yet the freedom is temporary: Pearl refuses to cross the brook until the letter is back on, and the lovers' plan collapses in Boston.
Characters:Hester PrynneArthur DimmesdalePearl
5Sin as a source of knowledge
The letter gives her 'a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts,' and her solitude frees her mind to range past Puritan orthodoxy—she speculates that the whole system of society must be torn down and rebuilt, and that her sin, paid for by penance, will not keep her from heaven. Dimmesdale's hidden guilt gives him sympathy with all sinners, which is why his sermons are powerful.
Characters:Arthur Dimmesdale