The Scarlet Letter: Forms of Punishment In the course of a lifetime a person will commit a wrong-doing. This act may as trivial as speaking out of turn, or it may be as serious as committing a murder. Following the incident a person is usaully admonished or punished by a person on a higher level. The punishment given can take many forms. In the book The Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniele Hawthorne, The protagonist, Hester Prynne, is punished for an act of adultery. Her sentence was to bear a scarlet letter of "A" upon her bosom. This punishment is a form of public humiliation. In the 1620's this form of punishment was one of the severest sentence