Scarlet Letter Essay

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an early Puritan colony uses a scaffold as a way to punish the convicted. A scaffold is a raised wooden platform with a crosspiece from which criminals are hanged. Though the scaffold has a very negative definition, it plays a very important role in this book. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold represents a place where people can find truth and reason. The use of the scaffold contributes to the theme of the novel is hypocricy in a society, and the scaffold was where people judged you.
Hester stood on the scaffold when she was convicted of committing adultery. Here, she was put to public misery. However, her partner of her iniquity did ot stand with her. The crowd demanded that she give them his name. " I will not speak! and my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one," Hester would tell them. Hester knew that Reverend Dimmesdale was her partner in crime, but she didn't want him to suffer along with her. Hester Prynne stood alone on the scaffold with her baby pressed against her chest. She faced the miserable truth that she would be shunned from society forever. Hawthorne is trying to show how judging people truly affects their lives.
Dimmesdale also found truth at the scaffold when he lost control in the middle of the night. 'He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere." His conscience was building up on him and re ran to the scaffold seven yuears after Hester stood there alone. When he saw Hester and Pearl, he asked them to stand with him. The three stood together forming an "electric chain." Dimmesdale wanted to admit his sin to the public, but the fact that he was a minister put pressure on him. He wanted to admit the truth, but Hester wouldn't let him. When he stand upon the scaffold, he knows the truth, yet he lacks the courage to take a public stand. Dimmesdale found the conclusion to his secret and life while standing on the scaffold. After preaching at the Election Day sermon, "He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms." This is where he admitted to commiting adultery with Hester. He reunited with his formal self and truth when he confessed. He could now call Hester and Pearl his own. He said, " there was no place so secret,- no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me-saved on this very scaffold." Standing on the scaffold the truth came out and he felt a resolution to the problem which was hung over his head for so many years.
The scaffold in The Scarlet Letter represents a place where people find truth and reason. It is where Dimmesdale and Hester reunited. It is also where Dimmesdale took his final breath. The scaffold is where people found truth that was so often denied.