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Hester Prynne And Dimmesdale In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

1132 Words5 Pages

People often say sins are the deepest and darkest part of a person, but are they really the deepest? Don't some people wear their sins on their sleeve for everyone to see? Yes they do, but then others bury their sins hiding them from humanity. These are the two types of people in the world: those that openly admit their sins and those who hide and deny their sins. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn, both of these types of people are represented in two of the main characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Throughout the novel, Hester Prynne suffers less than Dimmesdale, Arthur Dimmesdale tries to hide his sin causing him too suffer more than Hester, and their personality types play a significant role in their suffering. Hester does not hide her sin and is publicly shamed for it. Her suffering is greatly reduced compared to that of her partner in sin. This enables her to deal with her sin better than Dimmesdale ever does. Since Hester's sin was known to all her community she began her work for purification. "...Hester bestowed …show more content…

The author shows us through both characters two of the many faucets of consequences of sin. More importantly, he shows us the good and the bad of hiding and admitting sins. He uses the pain of his main characters as a scary reminder of the aftermath of evil acts, the consequences of being a coward or a courageous soul. The deepest and darkest part of Arthur Dimmesdale was his act of passion with Hester. Dimmesdale was a coward who hid his sin and it cost him his life. Hester went through public humiliation, wearing her sin for all to see and she lived till old age killed her. These two characters represent more than the sin they committed. They show us the pain of a hidden sin and the fruits of a public

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Dimmesdale suffers differently from Hester, because while she “bore it all” to the townspeople (181), his fears forced him to hide his sin, living a life full of “nothing but despair” (177). Hester, though made a social pariah of the town, has a more honest and healthy way of dealing with her sin. Because Hester is forced to face her wrongdoings under the watchful eye of her Puritan neighbors, she did not have the same guilt of secrecy that Dimmesdale did. Dimmesdale, by hiding his sin, allows himself to become a captive to his guilt. The way that Dimmesdale dealt with his guilt was unhealthy for him, both mentally and physically.

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In the novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the protagonist is found guilty of adultery after spending time prison her only other punishment is to wear the letter A for the rest of her life and stand on a raised platform for three hours. Hester is out in the open, in front of society standing there on the platform. For that three hours many fingers were pointed and many whispers filled the air. In that time Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale delivers a sermon convincing Hester Prynne to speak the name of her lover. Dimmesdale uses rhetorical devices to help him get the name out of her such as rhetorical question, where he questions what good does keeping the name from the public get her; pathos, arousing her

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After having been Hester being publicly shamed in such a dreadful manor, dimmesdale was definitely not going to put himself through that. This idea of public shaming scares people, and especially Dimmesdale here, into changing their behaviors. In this case, however, instead of the shame causing someone to conform to society, it caused dimmesdale to do the opposite , to hide from society, and to thus avoid this shame. However, despite the difference in course of action in both instances, in school today, and in the Puritan society back then, the people were trying to avoid the shame that was made out to be a dreadful consequence for

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In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are faced with major pain and suffering. Dimmesdale forced himself to keep Hester’s and his secret safe, which continued to fester inside him and cause detriment to his well-being. Also, Chillingworth continued to torture him slowly, over the years, which made his suffering worse. Many other factors contributed to the devastation of Dimmesdale, but these are of great importance. Hester and Dimmesdale both indeed suffered, but Dimmesdale suffered more throughout his life, because of his internal pain and the infliction of self-harm, as well as external detriment from outside sources.

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What could tear a minister from his high place in society down into a pool of his own blood, whipping himself for a seven-year guilt? In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the story of Minister Arthur Dimmesdale, who, following a scandalous act of adultery, struggles to hide his wrongdoing from the public eye each day. As Dimmesdale watches Hester Prynne and the pairs’ child suffer through each day, he remains God’s voice to the people, while in secret, a guilty and broken man. Arthur Dimmesdale’s past sin fatally poisons him which proves that deadly guilt harms not only the guilty person but those close to him as well. Dimmesdale’s consistent denial of his sin protects him from public judgment but ultimately proves worse for his soul. As Hester stands upon the scaffold, treading water in a sea of disparaging Puritan faces, her

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Hester makes most of the sin. Hester and Dimmesdale can be compared and contrasted in the way they handled their scarlet letters. While Hester is stubborn, Dimmesdale is extremely cautious. Hester and Dimmesdale both committed a sin and were affected by that sin greatly. Additionally, keeping a secret from others can be a sneaky task and may turn out bad for an individual.

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This only made his guilt worsen. Dimmesdale does not feel passionate when he is trying to do job. The people are only imagining getting help because his tainted soul could not possibly redeem other souls. He feels as if he is cheating those people in their faith. Hester then tries to rebuttal by saying “Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes.

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In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the character Hester Prynne demonstrates the two characteristics of resilience and persistence. By being resilient and persistent, Hester has been able to get through many challenges in her life such as: recovering from her time in prison and the scaffold, ignoring the challenging times that have happened in the past, by being loyal to her family and lastly, Hester has maintained with her penance from her sin. Hawthorne suggests that Hester has become a fiercer woman from her sin and that allows her to be resilient and steadfast.

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His novel The Scarlet Letter expresses this very idea by exposing the follies of mankind and the potentially detrimental effects of sin through Hester Prynne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth

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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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Firstly, Hester in the eyes of the puritan society is on the spotlight compared to other sinners. For Hester, her sin of bearing a child with her lover and not her husband constrains her into detachment

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She stands there under the watchful eyes of the public, adorning the a scarlet letter “A” for adultery burning in her soul. This public shaming seems surreal to Hester. Then, to make matters worse with familiar features of her past witness this event. She

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Hester Prynne, the Worst Sinner Three different people, all with different stories but all have something in common; they’re all sinners but the question is who is the biggest sinner? In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many characters are portrayed as sinners like Dimmesdale, Hester, and Chillingworth. But overall the biggest sinner in the story was Hester Prynne and there are many reasons for it. Obviously the reason for the scarlet letter, she was an adulteress. Hester caused many problems with people in the town including the most holy man Dimmesdale and a man that should've never been involved, Chillingworth.

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1662 Words | 7 Pages

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores recurring themes of suffering surrounding the main characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester and Dimmesdale both commit adultery with each other, and, as a result of this, both experience gruesome and occasionally unbearable forms of suffering. Though they undergo different forms of pain, both of their experiences are highly reliant on how the Puritan society treats them. Hester 's pain stems from the shame and estrangement she receives from the community, while Dimmesdale’s is due to the reverence with which the community regards him. Although, in spite of the fact that both Hester and Dimmesdale receive harsh penalty for their sin, by the end of the book, Hawthorne shows how their suffering is, in fact, the key to their salvation.

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In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)

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