The Importance of Scaffolding in The Scarlet Letter Since the beginning of time, humans have had to face their own sinfulness. Some rely on religious faith to help them in the fight against sin, while others compound their sins by lying to hide other sins. Ultimately, man must stand alone – as a sinful creature before God. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale struggles with his sin until he discovers that the gallows is a place where he can find peace with himself. That gallows has more importance than just a place to condemn prisoners. It's the only place Dimmesdale has felt free to say whatever he wants. In Puritan culture, the gallows is used to humiliate and punish prisoners, whether they are witches at the stake, thieves in the stocks, or a murderer hanging from the gallows. In The Scarlet Letter the gallows was seen more as a place of judgment. “Megra… was the sympathy a transgressor might seek, from such spectators, at the gallows.” (p. 63) Indeed, it was used for punishment, but it was also a place of trial: Hester's trial was held on the gallows. Standing on the platform opens us to God and the world. “They were in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that will reveal all secrets, and the dawn that will unite all who belong to each other.” (p. 186) Being on the scaffold puts one into a feeling of spiritual nakedness, where one feels exposed to God, yet purified. It was the only place Dimmesdale could find complete reconciliation. Witnessing an event like reconciliation is quite a fascinating experience. But without knowing what's happening, it can also be quite terrifying. “Without any effort of will, or power to restrain himself, he [Dimmesdale] cried aloud: a cry that rang through the night, and was borne from house to house, and rang from the hills beyond; as if a company of devils, seeing so much misery and terror in it, had made a toy of it and flaunted it to and fro. (pp. 178-9) Indeed, citizens felt the latter. "The sleepy ones mistook the cry either for something frightening in a dream, or for the noise of witches." (p. 179) They did not understand that this was his reconciliation.