By: Candy Nathaniel Hawthorne was a great American writer in his time. He saw problems in the government and the ways people lived their lives that were beyond his years. The Scarlet Letter was one of his greatest literary works, telling the story of a young woman plagued by a simple misdeed and shunned by all that she knew. He wrote this novel to try and show everyone at the time just how antiquated their ideas were and that it was time for a change in society. The Scarlet Letter was written with the purpose of mocking the strict practice of theocracy and how the church was basically controlling the government and how if the church didn’t agree w