What effects the salvations of the major characters respectively in The Scarlet Letter? Major characters = Hester, Rev. Dimmesdale, Roger...

's examination
of the psychological effects of
sin and indictment of Puritanism in
 provides much
insight into the human soul.  This seminal work of
Hawthorne's depicts both
the inner turmoils as well as the external conflicts involved in a
Puritan
community where sin has no forgiveness. Yet, the maindo find redemption for
their
iniquities. 

Set as an
example to others of the penalties for sin against Puritan
law, Hester Prynne is publicly shamed
and made to wear a scarlet symbol of
her adultery.  Ironically, however, it is the
Catholic/Anglican theology,
from which the Puritans revolted, with its precept of redeeming
grace from
good works as atonement for sin which effects Hester's salvation. For, despite
her
being marked as a sinner and ostracized from the community, Hester's acts
of Christian charity
in tending the ill and dying are what earn her grace and
the acceptance of many in the Puritan
community as, with the unsubstantive
nature of symbols, they come to perceive the symbolic
A
as representative of positive connotations of "Angel" or
"Able."

Reverend

Forced by
his unforgiving Puritanism to hide his secret sin of adultery in his heart,

the Reverend Dimmesdale's grievous guilt tortures his soul to the extent that his sin at
last
reveals itself physically in illness and
the stigmata of the symbol of
adultery upon his own
chest (ironically, stigmata is another documented

manifestation of Catholicism ). And, it is only from confession--another facet of
the
"Papists"--that the minister's soul is redeemed.

As the incarnation of Hester's
sin
(and, though unbeknownst to the community, Dimmesdale's), little Pearl is
described as an
"imp," "a laughing image of a fiend," and "an airy
sprite."
Indeed, Pearl is not fully human until her father acknowledges her
and she, then, is "made
flesh," so to speak. In Chapter XXIII, Hawthorne
writes,

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell
was broken.....and as her tears fell upon her father's
cheek, they were the
pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do

battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish
was
fulfilled.

His soul rotted by
the worm of revenge, Roger Chillingworth who vows "He will be
mine" in his
search for the partner in sin of Hester who has brought him ignominy,

Chillingworth commits the terrible sin of violating the secrets of the human heart.  In
fact,
in a conversation with Hester, he himself admits that he has become a
"fiend."  And,
when Dimmesdale publicly confesses, Chillingworth knows that
his hopes of revenge are
lost: "Thou hast...escaped me."  Then, he kneels
beside the minister and looks as
though his life "seemed to have
departed."

Chillingworth's sins are
more egregious than
those of any other character; he has sinned against Nature when he married

Hester, young and passionate as she was when he was neither.  Then he sins as he
subordinates
his heart to his intellect as he sacrifices Dimmesdale for his
own selfish desire for
revenge. In the end, Chillingworth withers and
blackens in death. His only chance
at redemption comes after he dies when he
leaves to Pearl his property as atonement for the ills
he has
caused.