The Scarlet Letter is portrayed with profound symbolism and revolves around the idea that hidden guilt causes more suffering than open guilt. This theme along with its symbolism is demonstrated through the lives of the three main characters - Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth throughout the story. Their personalities are shown most clearly during the scaffold scenes. These scenes are the most substantial situations in the story because they illustrate the immediate, delayed, and prolonged effects that the sin of adultery has on the main characters. From careful analysis of the first two scenes, one can predict what will be the approximate outcome of the third.
             It's apparent that the first scaffold happening was early on in the book, one of the very first scenes. In the first scene, everyone in the town is gathered in the market place because Hester is being questioned about the identity of the father of her child Pearl. Hester experiences open guilt through being publicly punished for adultery. She is being forced to stand on the scaffold for three hours straight to be ridiculed and ostracized by the community. While Hester tries to make the best out of her situation, Dimmesdale becomes weaker by letting guilt and grief eat away at his conscience, reducing him to a shriveling, pathetic creature.
             Unlike Hester, Dimmesdale refuses to admit that he has committed adultery and thereby eventually suffers hidden guilt. His instantaneous response to the sin is to not to recognize it but rather to hide. He stands before Hester and the rest of the town and proceeds to give a moving speech about how it would be in her and the father's best interest for her to reveal the father's name, "If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer"
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