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@scarletimmortalized This is an interesting thread! I haven’t thought about amoral characters much before.

I started reading The Scarlet Letter for the first time a few days ago. What @sarah-inkdragon said about morals and ethics definitely applies to this book. The Puritan society that Nathanial Hawthorne portrays is very strict with regard to sin and immorality. Hester’s punishment is to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress. She is shamed and cannot function normally in society. This is an example of the ethics of the culture.

Though Hester yields to the punishment, she has a different set of morals where she almost seems to reject the rest of Puritan ideology. When tempted with the same sin that disgraced her, she does not immediately reject it. Perhaps this is because she thinks she has been treated unfairly, or because she never truly repented? Whatever the case, Hawthorne writes her as a sympathetic character, and that can be dangerous.

Hester’s whimsical daughter, Pearl, might be considered an amoral character. She is certainly not bound by the ethics of the culture, answering only to herself.

As a side note, I haven’t actually finished the book yet. My knowledge of it isn’t perfect. I only noticed some similarities between the characters in The Scarlet Letter and the definition of amoral characters. I don’t know if this helped any, but I thought I’d share. 🙂