The ninth commandment tells man not to give false witness.

(Exodus 20:16) Nathaniel Hawthorn and Charles Dickens in their novels The Scarlet Letter and A Tale of Two Cities, respectively, both use punishment for deception as a recurr ing theme. Although they do so to different degrees and in dissimilar manners, both authors agree that deception is a sin that requires punishment. In The Scarlet Letter, the heroine, Hester Prynne conceived a child out of wedlock. Despite the pleas and demands of the clerical community, she did no t reveal the identity of the father. The Puritanical community in which she liv ed in demanded her to give up her conspirator or bear the consequences of the de ed alone. Due to her doggedness, the townsmen sentenced her to wear a scarlet l etter *A* embroidered on her chest. The A served as a symbol of her crime, was a punishment of humiliation, gave her constant shame, and reminded her of her si n. Hester*s penalization was a prime example where deception led to negative co nsequences in that she would have been spared the entire encumbrance of the crim e if she did not deceive the townspeople. Although seemingly, her paramour did not escape punishment. In fact, the father of her bastard child took a more severe sentence. R everend Arthur Dimmesdale seemed to be an upstanding, young priest. The whole t own liked him and respected him as a holy man. Thus, his deception was much mor e direct and extreme when he did not confess that he impregnated Hester Prynne. Unlike Hester, he was not publicly punished. So although Hester overcame her o rdeal and went on with her life, Dimmesdale exacted a constant, physical and men tal reprobation on himself. This inner pain was so intense that his physical he alth began to reflect his inner sufferings. In the end, he redeemed himself by his confession in front of the whole town, but his long endurance of the secret took its toll and he died. Roger Chillingworth had a similar fate. Like Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Hester*s husband, keeps his relation to her a secret. Chillingworth*s deception allows him to become consumed with hatr ed and the desire to inflict his revenge on the one who stole his wife*s heart. Because he had secretly lived his life in hate, he too began to show his rotten inner self on the outside. Never having revealed his true identity to everyone , he died without solace and alone. Although Charles Dickens is not so severe in the castigation of his char acters, he too makes the crime of deception punishable even by death. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Darnay is an example of one who escapes punishment for h is offense. Charles Darnay was his first line of deception. Darnay used this pseudo nym in order to hide his roots in the French aristocracy. He was truly an Evr*m onde. This fact continuously haunted him later when he met and fell in love wit h Lucy Manette. This was due to her roots which lied in her father, Dr. Manett e. Dr. Manette was imprisoned unjustly by an Evr*monde and saw their abuses of the peasant class. He thusly accused all Evr*mondes of being monsters. Later, he suspected that Charles was an Evr*monde, but did not tell anyone because of his daughter*s relationship with Charles. This became a problem later when Char les needed to go to France after the start of the Revolution. Because he had al ways been careful to hide his identity, he assumed no one knew his true identity so he left for France despite the danger the Revolution was for him. When he a rrived, he was immediately imprisoned and sentenced to death. Only through the sacrifice of another man, he escaped his sentence. Every character was not as lucky as him, however. Another character who despised the Evr*mondes was Madame Defarge. She w as not spared an unnatural death. Like Dr. Manette she hid the fact that an Ev r*monde wronged her in the past. In her case, it was an Evr*monde who impregnat ed her sister and killed her brother. She secretly abhorred the family of Evr*m ondes and nurtured hopes for someday exacting a revenge upon them. Unlike Dr. Manette, she could not separate Darnay from his infamous family and tried to hav e him killed during the Revolution. Because of her secret, she tried to confron t Charles alone. This led to her confrontation with Ms. Pross when looking for

the Evr*mondes. In her struggle with Ms. Pross, she draws a gun, only to be a ccidentally shot with it by Ms. Pross, ending her life. Dr. Manette had a secret hate for the Evr*mondes too, but his ability t o see past Charles* name saved him from a fatal end. As a victim of the Evr*mon des, it was necessary for him to risk his life when he wanted to save Darnay fro m death. A letter, he wrote years ago before he knew Charles, that deemed all E vr*mondes as monsters made this impossible. Because of this he almost caused hi s only love in life*s, his daughter, the pain of losing her husband. The sacrif ice of man named Sydney Carton saved him from going through his daughter*s grief and allowed his son in-law to live. The sacrifice of Sydney Carton was his punishment for secrecy. He was i n every outward aspect, Charles Darnay. This included the fact that he was in l ove with Lucy Manette. Unfortunately, his mirror image and Lucy were already in love and he knew that he could not win her heart. Thus, he was consigned to lo ve Lucy clandestinely and hated himself for the years of life he wasted making n othing of himself. He was jealous of Charles, who was just like him, but had ma de something of himself, and thus, won Lucy*s heart. When Charles was in prison and was waiting to be executed, these inner feelings of Carton came into play a s he made Darnay switch clothing with him so that he would go to the guillotine and Darnay would go free. Charles* life was his gift to Lucy and his revenge up on Darnay who, now, owed his life to Carton. He was one who faced the punishmen t of death. The death of a character is the ultimate penalty in both The Scarlet Let ter and A Tale of Two Cities. Both Dickens and Hawthorn use this to compensate for a character*s falsification and the wrongdoings due to the secrets that each hide. They both, however, also allow death to be an end with grace, as it was for Reverend Dimmesdale, in A Scarlet Letter, and Sydney Carton, in A Tale of Tw o Cities. Both characters were allowed to die in peace because of the penitence each went through. Although there were some similarities in the penalties, there were more differences. Even in the death penalty, the two authors inflicted them upon the ir characters in different manners. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, in Hawthorn*s novel, died by a physical reaction to the inner deterioration of each man. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens had his characters go through violent and unnatura l demises. Another difference was the fate of the others. Hawthorn let Hester Prynne live, but she lived alone and without comfort for her past. On the other hand, Charles Darnay and Dr. Manette both escaped the consequences of their du pery and went on to live with happiness. Whether by death, humiliation, or difficult trials, Nathaniel Hawthorn a nd Charles Dickens imprint upon the readers mind, that deception is an offense a nd must be punished.