One of America's greatest writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote on many philosophical issues that he viewed during his own time. It is quite ironic that he wrote his works hundreds of years ago, and the issues that plagues mankind then, still plague mankind today. In the opening chapter of The Scarlet Letter the narrator says:
            
            
             "A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life,-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation,-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!" Such are the compliments bandied between my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine." (Hawthorne 26)
            
             When the author begins to talk about his "grandsires", he is talking about the problems of the past which haven't gone away in the time between his life, and his grandsires death. In his shorts stories (Young Goodman Brown and The Birth-Mark in particular) and in his famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne discusses many issues based on the ideas of morality during the Puritan colonial period in America. However, after review, all of these issues lead to a single main idea. Human beings, through their acts and thoughts are, by nature, imperfect.
             In Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, human beings try to be perfect, by implementing morals and laws, but some people stray away from these rules of society, thus proving imperfection. Hester is a prime example of imperfect. However, throughout the story, many different reactions to the scarlet letter take place by the towns people. First, they are appauled by it, as adultery in the Puritan age was not only a crime, but an act of blasphemy. As illustrated in the following passage, "Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a truth, moreover, there is...