Scarlet Letter: Reality vs Perception

Scarlet Letter: Reality vs Perception Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a dark tale of sin and redemption, centers around the small Puritan community of Boston during the seventeenth century. In the middle of the town market place is a " . . .weather darkened scaffold. . . (234)" where sinners are made to face the condemning public. The people standing on the scaffold experience strange phenomena while on the scaffold. Some become braver, some meeker. And whether the people are …

…blindly guided by public perception hide themselves in lies and never confront the truth when it is presented. Even while the dying reverend confesses his sin on the scaffold, the townspeople deny " . . . his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied . . . the slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne [had committed] . . . (241)". Hawthorne’s point is clear: there are those who embrace the truth, and those who avoid it at all costs.