" Alienation is perhaps the theme [Hawthorne] handles with the greatest power. "Insulation," he sometimes called it- which suggest not only isolation but imperviousness... Its causes are many and complex, its results simple: it puts one outside the "magic circle" or the "magnetic chain" of humanity, where there is neither love nor reality. It is Hawthorne's image of damnation. Reunion, often imaged by the hearth, is his redemptive cure."
             Alienation is when a character is in a state of isolation. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses alienation as the main theme of the novel. Hester, the main character is isolated from the society of her small Puritan community she committed the sin of adultery. This excerpt from The Scarlet Letter is an example of the isolation of Hester and her daughter Pearl. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation,while it's comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. Hester Prynne isolates herself from society, although she did this, Hester continues to work at home knitting and ignores the harassment and visitors that haunt her.
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