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 recurring 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 not reveal the identity of the father. The Puritanical community in which she lived in demanded her to give up her conspirator