Arthur Dimmesdale Quotes

Arthur Dimmesdale: Inside His Own Version of Hell

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky spoke, “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a rounded character such as Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, displays vital roles in the novel: a highly regarded Reverend in a Puritan society and the father of protagonist Hester Prynne’s child, Pearl. Through the well-written and three-dimensional character of Arthur Dimmesdale, Hawthorne exhibits the themes of guilt and suffering. emotional instability and physical appearances suffer throughout the entire novel. Dimmesdale’s inability to love those he wishes to, due to the high standards of the Puritan community, causes him to

His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.

The suffering from his guilt has intensity that it has begun to directly affect him physically. From the passage above in chapter nine, He decaying physical features have an “emaciated” and “paleness” to the face. The grabbing of his heart points out his internal struggle of his soul aching for redemption.

Dimmesdale’s suffering from his guilt will lead to his mental instability. His madness derives from his inability to let free of his burden of sin. Later on, the townspeople become aware of his decline in health when his preachings become more solemn and quiet due to his lack of strength. The people believed that his suffering and sickness was a trial sent from God to prove his worth. This caused him even more woes and tribulations than his soul could manage. The deception led him to feel suffer and guilt tenfold in chapter

... He longed to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was.

His deception over the people increases his stress level which add onto his decline of health.

Dimmesdale’s suffering and guilt drives him to physically abuse himself. His mental instability needed to find an outlet to release his inner struggle, his turmoil. The guilt and suffering he felt so, lead him to whip himself and bleed through his clothes; he laughed while doing so, in the privacy of his home. In result, he formed a gruesome bloody wound on his chest. Dimmesdale’s bloody chest is the holds the same symbolic meanings as Hester Prynne’s embroidery scarlet letter. While Hester is able to publicly display hers, he harbors his darkest secret on his bloody whipped chest in chapter nine:

In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly, because of that bitter