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The Road of a Religion Throughout The Scarlet Letter, author Nathaniel Hawthorne continuously uses the image of a road or path as a metaphor for the limited individual freedom within the Puritan religion. The road, an entity that demands adherence to a dictated direction, is similar to the structure of Puritanism, which defines a set of strict moral laws that must be followed. On pages 159-160, the passage that begins with "The road" and ends …

…outside the path, to describe the tempting alternative to following this difficult path. Hawthorne's purpose in this passage is to illuminate the flaws in the Puritan path that make deviancy, like the act committed by Hester Prynne, almost unavoidable. He stresses the difficulties in the actual construction of the path, as well as the temptations that lie just outside its narrow boundaries, in order to make his statement on the flaws of the Puritan religion.