Love, heartbreak, adultery, public humiliation. These four subjects and many more, are the main themes that run through The Scarlet Letter. Author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, reveals his concerns with the tension between the public and private selves. The main characters in this novel are: Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. This novel is set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston. Hester is ultimately the main character in this novel. She returns from England without her husband and had an adulterous affair with the Reverend Dimmesdale. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit and emerges as a heroine. She is quite beautiful in appearance with black hair, black eyes, and shining skin. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a well-respected and learned pastor in Boston. Arthur is Hester's pastor and father of their illegitimate daughter, Pearl. He is a very sickly...