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crime of people became larger, it was not enough just to select a goat, so God sent his son, Jesus, to the world and to bear all the sins of the world. As a symbol of the sin of the world, he was crucified. This eventually becomes the archetype of Jesus, a scapegoat. Hester sins through her passionate nature which is regarded as evil by traditional Puritanism. Though passion is one of human’s natural traits, it is forbidden in the Puritan community. The public gatherings at the prison and at the scaffold speak to a Puritan belief: the belief that sin not only permeates the human world but should be actively sought out and exposed so that it can be punished publicly. Puritans consider adultery to be immortal. They suppress natural joys and pleasures brutally and negate all mirth and passion. Rather than seeing their own potential sinfulness in Hester, the townspeople see her as someone whose transgression outweigh their own errors. Despite the Christian belief that all people are innately evil, the townspeople never recognize that they are themselves sexual or passionate. As Hester perceptively senses, “she shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts….Could they be other than the insidious whisper of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, of truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne’s….”(Hawthorne, p. 115). The puritan fathers force Hester to wear “A”, the badge of adultery, to punish her and also make her a living warning to others who are tempted to give in to unlawful impulses. The community makes her a target for their cruelty. They suppose that they can better deny the passion of their own nature by projecting it onto Hester and despising for it. Hester, as a scapegoat, is a reminder that gives the townspeople, especially the women, a chance to demonstrate or convince themselves of their own piety by condemning Hester as loudly as possible. Hester possesses the passionate nature, which the Puritan community is trying to suppress but which it cannot do without. The capacity which her scarlet letter gives her to detect the presence of the same sinful passion, only serves to emphasize her scapegoat role. To some extent, Hester is the scapegoat of Dimmesdale as well. Both Hester and Dimmesdale have sinned, but they answered for their sins in quite different ways. Hester is denied by the Puritan world and becomes an outcast, while her partner, Dimmesdale, is honored and cherished in the hearts of Puritan people. Hester wears the scarlet letter on her bosom for the adulterous crime she has committed. By sharp contrast, Dimmesdale is venerated by townspeople and becomes the embodiment of piety. Hester has to endure all the difficulties and raise the child on her own. Just as John C. Gerber once says, “she bears a double infamy, her own and that of her partner” (Gerber, p. 83).
2.3 Virgin Mary Throughout the novel, Hawthorne gives hints to suggest a close connection between Virgin Mary and Hester. The suggestion starts from the beginning of the novel, when Hester is severely punished, receiving public humiliation and at her lowest point of life. The author speaks explicitly in Chapter II when Hester is tried at the scaffold, “H