True redemption of sin comes from suffering. When a person goes against what they judge as wrong, the only way to be freed of the guilt that their actions have caused is to feel the pain emotionally from the guilt of their sin. The guilt they feel on the inside and the shame they have to face others is their atonement. Feeling that guilt shows that the person has recognized their sin as wrong and the constant reminder from the pain of guilt and shame of the sin forces the person to change their ways. Recognizing the sin and changing the ways that are inside the person that could possibly justify the sin, is the definition of true atonement and redemption. Others find that emotional suffering is insubstantial, and they need something more tangible to truly suffer from. Therefore, they turn their manifested emotional pain into physical pain by means of self injury, to have the physical pain serve as the atonement instead of the emotional suffering since the person cannot relate to their emotional pain and by not relating to the emotional pain they cannot use it as an atonement because they don't experience it as the real pain that it is.
             Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter shows how each type of suffering (emotional and physical) redeems the person and how the person is affected by his/her suffering. Set in a New England town in the 1640's, two characters with the same sin of adultery atone and redeem themselves differently but both are redeemed in the end. Hester atones physically while Dimmesdale, her lover and reverend of the community, atones emotionally but both are only redeemed when they each atone in both ways of atonement, and only through suffering.
             Hester must atone for her sin physically for everyone to see but also for herself because she can't handle the manifestation of the guilt inside her. It overwhelms her to have an illegitimate child to raise on her own, to be the symbol of evil in the community ...