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Dimmesdale's Responsibility For Sin In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

878 Words4 Pages

The book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a complex novel that has underlying themes of sin and the responsibility for sin. The novel takes place in a Puritanical society, but two people, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, fornicate with each other, even though Hester is married to someone else. Only Hester is punished, so Dimmesdale keeps his guilt inside, not revealing it to anyone. Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, then proceeds to ruin Hester’s partner in crime, corrupting his soul and being the ultimate cause for his death. Hester, on the other hand, leads a relatively happy life after she had repented for her sin. Hester and Dimmesdale each are equivalent in the sin that they commit, but their lives and fates are different because Hester had to repent for her crimes while Dimmesdale bottled up his guilt inside. The indirect result of Dimmesdale’s concealment of the truth was Chillingworth’s torture, which played a large role in Dimmesdale’s untimely death. Chillingworth snapped when Hester did not reveal Dimmesdale’s crimes. Hester, in part, helped Dimmesdale in …show more content…

Therefore, when Chillingworth gets to torturing Dimmesdale, she has already confessed her guilt over three years. Therefore, her emotional trauma is virtually nil compared to Dimmesdale’s and she also has relatively little emotional tension. Right before Hester enters the Forest with Pearl, “…Hester’s nature showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by largest.” (110-111) When one compares this with Dimmesdale’s sick, decrepit state at this time in the book, one can see the difference between Hester and Dimmesdale, and following that the effects of divulging guilt and concealing it. Hester’s personality was “warm and rich,” while Dimmesdale was on the brink of insanity, his personality and soul twisted and

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Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both have secrets that make them look and act differently, their secrets affect their character and how they do their job. Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl but he doesn 't want to face the same humiliation as Hester did for his sins. Because of his secret he self punishes and fasts, he also preaches better than he did before although his health is failing. Chillingworth’s secret is that he was the husband of Hester while he was away, before she cheated on him. Chillingworth gets uglier and uglier driven by the need to get revenge on Pearl’s father.

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Hester is less of a sinner than he is, and so is her lover. There are many different explanations about why Chillingworth is more degenerate than Hester and Dimmesdale. One explanation is that Hester and Dimmesdale made one mistake, and they are both being punished in different ways. Each of them learned from this mistake and in turn became better people. Chillingworth, however, took his plot of revenge and became a very vile person.

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Mentally, his guilt strains his mind, which causes his physical deterioration, and the weakening of his body. As Dimmesdale finally admits his sin to the townspeople, his guilt is lifted, and he is able to release himself from his captivity. Though he deteriorated both mind and body from his guilt, by telling the townspeople of his sin, it was as if “a spell was broken” (238). He no longer needed to force himself to hide his sin, which was what was hurting him. By finally dealing with his sin in a similar way to Hester, Dimmesdale was able to free himself of his self-imposed captivity and

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Hester and Dimmesdale have both committed adultery, but Hester accepts and embraces what has happened. Alternatively, for Dimmesdale, enduring seven long years of guilt and sin are required to get him to finally reveal the truth. Taking so many years to do so shows how

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(125). Chillingworth was not always a bad man, as he says. Hester’s scandal and betrayal hurt Chillingworth deeply, to the point where he became evil and sought revenge. Chillingworth was humiliated, and Dimmesdale and Hester were the two people that had made him that way, which is why he sought

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man. This conflict is an external problem. The main issue is that Chillingworth tortures Dimmesdale because he suspects that Dimmesdale was the one that committed the sin along side of Hester. When the people think that Dimmesdale is sick it’s

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The narrator states, "Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not to speak" (Hawthorne 138). Nevertheless, his moral development continuously stays at Stage 1 "Obedience and Punishment Orientation" because yet again his actions are selfish. He is more considerate about his

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No person, especially Dimmesdale, would act in this manner. All of Dimmesdale appears to fall from his high public stature meanwhile Hester rises from the depths of public scrutiny to be praised. As Hester and Dimmesdale changed throughout the story, their deaths each memorialized the legacy they had ended with. Dimmesdale ended his life with an odd spectacle as he died with great pain, withering away until his last breath.

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Throughout the story, it is clear that he wants to confess his sin, when he is yelling at the scaffold at night but he’s too weak to do it publicly. The interactions between Hester and Dimmesdale show her hold over him because she has been publicly condemned for a sin that they had committed together. His inability to reveal and accept the truth makes him extremely weak. When Dimmesdale decides to reveal the truth during his Election Day speech, he passes away because he had waited too

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The Hidden Sin and The Revealed Sin As humans, we live in the that are brimming with sins and evil desire. As the creator of all the creatures, God, sent his only son to save the people from the control of devil. The only thing we have to do is to acknowledge our mistake. Bible teach us that we should tell the truth to God and your neighbors, and God will forgive you. But people are worse, they not only hide the sin and their evil behaviors but also try to deny it.

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The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan Boston during the seventeenth century. Hester Prynne, a young woman guilty of adultery, is freed from jail to live the rest of her life with two reminders of her sin, a scarlet letter A on her chest and her daughter, Pearl. Hester experiences both societal and self-judgment as a consequence of her sin, and her self-judgment later transforms into sincere guilt. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister, and Pearl’s secret father, is introduced and utilized to illustrate and contrast the impacts of sin and guilt on individuals. Hawthorne highlights the impacts of sin and guilt on the two main characters in the novel to add variation and reveal their truths.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is heavily centered on showing diverse ways the Puritan people could face guilt and sin. As the plot develops, the four main characters: Hester Prynne, Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingsworth, all reach individual climaxes by dealing with the effects of guilt and sin differently. Hester confronts the guilt of adultery head on by flagrantly wearing a scarlet letter on her chest, Pearl deals with guilt and sin by being a living symbol of Hester’s egregious offense, Arthur Dimmesdale confronts the guilt of sin privately which leads to mental instability, and Roger Chillingsworth faces guilt and sin by being consumed by the darkness it causes. There are several climaxes in The Scarlet Letter due to the main characters facing the central conflict, the effects of guilt and sin, in various ways.

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In reality, he is the reason for Dimmesdale’s suffering. Chillingworth’s sin causes him to be so obstinate that he One may ask why Hester, Dimmesdale, or society are not worse sinners. When looking at each party’s sin it is easy to see who is the most corrupt. While Hester is unfaithful and Dimmesdale is culpable of living a lie, they both are able to accept their wrongdoing. The society is not guilty for their actions and beliefs as they are a product of their time.

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1029 Words | 5 Pages

After the sin was committed, the development of guilt made Hester and Dimmesdale very miserable because they could not stop thinking about what they have done. Both of the characters kept going back to that moment, feeling remorse

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Throughout the novel, Hester is fraught by the Puritan society and her suffering is an effect of how evil society is. Hester continues to believe that the crime she committed was not wrong and she should not be punished for it. Her desire to protect and love Dimmesdale, turn her into a stronger person and become a heroine in the book. Although society still views her as a “naughty baggage” (Hawthorne 73) and is punished for her wrongdoing, Hester never thought to take revenge on them, yet she gives everything she has to the unfortunate and leaves herself with very little. She continues to stay positive no matter what society has for her.

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