The Scarlet Letter: Darkness Illuminated Since the conception of humanity, man has been fascinated with that presence which illuminates, yet cannot be touched. Mankind has brought it into his religions, giving it a great deal of importance in his creed. Following in the footsteps of his ancestors, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses light as a tool of God that illuminates the darkness of human iniquity and exposes its permanence. He studies the psychological theme of the impossibility of eradicating sin from the human heart in his novel The Scarlet Letter. The use of light in order to fortify this psycholog