The Scarlet Letter 6

"At the great judgment day"(139).

Judgment day is constantly referred to as the day at the end of time where God will judge humans and decide their fate according to good and evil or the peak of religion and theology. In other words, it is a trial. The people are the jury, but God is the judge and ultimate decision maker. Thus far in the novel there have been two scaffold scenes, the first being in the beginning of the novel when Hester was forced to stand there for a few hours a day so that her sin be made public. The second, is when Dimmesdale returns to the scaffolding seven years later at midnight and stands on the top of it, joined by Hester and Pearl, where he refuses to mount the scaffold with Hester and Pearl the following day which could symbolize Dimmesdale's disobedience to God and cowardice. Hawthorne uses these scaffold scenes to build up to the climax and greater events. At first one sinner stood on the scaffold, the second time, two sinners stood on the scaffold (Hester and Dimmesdale, and the third is yet to come where more than two sinners will mount the scaffold and be judged by the audience (just like Chillingworth saw and judged Dimmesdale).