Sin is all around us: in ourselves and in other people in our society. Nathaniel Hawthorne, as many others, believed that in order for a sin to be cancelled the sinner needs penance and penitence. He considered isolation from society a great sin that needs to be re-established before a person is truly free. The Scarlet Letter is a book pertaining to this idea of sin when its main characters: Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, and Hester, need to penance and return to society.

In his return from capture by the Indians in the woods, Chilingworth found that Hester had cheated on him. The only girl, that he had wanted to create a family with, had found someone else and now had his baby. Chillingworth, being the man of knowledge that he was, needed to learn the true identity of the father. He isolated himself from society, in order to become...