Nathaniel Hawthorne's most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, exemplifies the themes and character types that abound throughout much of his work. The Scarlet Letter examines the conflict between Puritan society and individual desires, scrutinizes the idea of sin as a means to make one "human," and reflects upon the guilt that accompanies it. Most readers are sympathetic toward the adulterers Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale and view the self-righteous Roger Chillingworth--the essential victim of the two lovers--as evil and even nonhuman. This irony threads through the story, as the fate of each character becomes apparent and their experiences and decisions lead to the inevitable conclusion.

In a black-and-white world, Hester Prynne is one of two things: a sinful adulteress who deserves the social ostracizing she receives or a helpless victim of Puritan rigor and inhuman expectations. In actuality, Hawthorne created a much more complicated character than either of those two scenarios allows. Hester is a determined individual who boldly defies the intolerant Puritan environment that punishes her for being an unwed mother. She chooses to define her own existence instead of letting social mores define her. In fact, she decides to remain an outcast even when she is given a chance to reunite with the Puritan world that expelled her--instead of accepting the letter 'A' as a shameful symbol of her sexual indiscretion and blasphemous sin, Hester considers it a sign of human experience and growth. She questions her disgraced status and deems what the Puritans call "immorality" as a basic human characteristic. Her rebellious convictions are all the more controversial considering her gender; a woman in Puritan New England was expected to be humble, meek, pious and obedient. Hester denies that her principles are sacrilegious or immoral. She is a person of faith who is confident in a loving and forgiving God, and, unlike her Puritan neighbors, she can thus forgive herself.

At the other end of the emotional spectrum is Roger Chillingworth, a calculating, analytical individual who seems incapable of identifying with the human condition. He remains aloof from personal relationships and is at home in a society that promotes rigidity and detachment. He plays the role of the wronged husband, but he and Hester were estranged long before her infidelity. His disdain for human emotion and sympathy, implied by his cold manner and behavior, would exist in spite of the illicit affair. Hawthorne portrays characters such as Chillingworth as obstacles to human growth and understanding. People who scorn experience and experimentation and disdain straying from the standard code of conduct never gain new knowledge--knowledge, that is, of real human existence. Chillingworth approaches people the way a scientist approaches a theory: intellectually, diagnostically and logically. In doing so, he avoids any true connections. On the other hand, Hester's sin and the subsequent social shunning prompt her to evaluate her environment with an altered perspective--one that she likely would never have acquired had she not sinned. The knowledge she obtains guides her to greater self-understanding and a fuller awareness of human behavior in general.

Arthur Dimmesdale is caught between his desire to be compassionate and sympathetic toward sinful reality and the deep-seated guilt established by his Puritan upbringing and profession as a minister. Like Hester, Dimmesdale experiences personal growth following their affair. He now knows firsthand the joy, pain, passion and guilt of being human. But it is this guilt that eats away at his newly discovered knowledge about himself and others and that prevents his reaching the level of recognition and acceptance that Hester has achieved. Because her sin has been exposed to the public, Hester is, in a sense, liberated. She can live her life honestly and move beyond the trepidations of the past. However, the townspeople do not know that Dimmesdale is the father of her illegitimate child and so he must pretend to be the upright man of God that they believe him to be. Instead of freeing himself of the burden by admitting who he is and defying the social edicts that keep him from being with Hester and their daughter, Dimmesdale confesses his sin and dies. He is the character that most poignantly exposes the harmful effects of intolerance and unreal expectations that exist in inhuman, unsympathetic environments. Hester rises above her society and Chillingworth is content to be a part of it; Dimmesdale, however, cannot manage either and so crumbles beneath the weight of his burden.