Capital punishment was wide spread in Puritan Boston. Although the Bible was a moral guide, societies were swarmed with crimes and sins. The punishments included severe whipping, imprisonment, slitting nostrils, and public execution on scaffold(“Puritan”). In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, although Hester and Dimmesdale are guilty of the similar sins, they experience different punishments and outcomes. Hester and Dimmesdale differ in types of sins. It is clear that they both commit adultery. However, the sins Hester and Dimmesdale commit have distinct nuance. First, Hester is a married woman. Her sin is definitely entitled as adultery. The book talks about Puritan world of Boston. It is when the words of God are primary life principals. Nonetheless, here stands a woman who infringes them, and sins against God. It also shocks the readers that the opponent of her crime is a reverend. The fact that Hester commits a sin with a reverend maximizes the effect of the sin. On the other hand, Reverend Dimmesdale is an unmarried man. Also, he is a reverend who should hold all the followers of God and speak for them. It is a great sin that he has a sexual relationship with a married woman. …show more content…
Hester commits adultery as a married woman, and Dimmesdale commits fornification as an unmarried man. Due to these sins, they both get punishments. Hester goes to jail for a few years and is sentenced to wear scarlet letter A on her chest. She is shunned and isolated. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, does not reveal his sin to public. Therefore, he is guilty throughout his life, and he is atoned. Unable to surmount, he confesses and dies on the scaffold. Later, Hester comes back to Boston and continues her job. When she dies, she is buried next to her loved one, with both sharing one scarlet letter