A is the correct answer
He said, "I'm too tired. I'm going home."
"Why," I asked, "we won't stay long."
A. The speaker is saying that she and her peers should be allowed to handle the punishments for people like Hester Prynne. She thinks this because they would band together as a group and be all on the same page in their punishment, rather than leaving it up to the magistrate--whose punishment she does not think adequately fit the crime Hester committed.
Culminate is the closest possible synonym of those 3
