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How Did Arthur Dimmesdale Use Darkness In The Scarlet Letter

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Philosopher William Shakespeare said, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” He based this statement off of something Matthew said in the Bible. To summarize, Matthew said that healthy eyes suggest that the body is full of light and if your eyes are unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. Not just the eyes, but the appearance of a person can tell a lot about his or her innermost feelings. This can be seen in the characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne's book The Scarlet Letter. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale physical features are transformed by the darkness weighing down on their hearts. Dimmesdale is introduced in the first scaffold scene. “[Dimmesdale] was a person of striking aspect with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, . . .” (Hawthorne 62). These traits show the first hints at his internal feelings of guilt. Nine months earlier and before he committed adultery with Hester Prynne, it can be …show more content…

He walked into the square for his Election Day speech with a new energy, which he got from the hope of escaping with Hester and their child, Pearl. After he completed his speech, all of that energy was drained. “It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a deathlike hue; it was hardly a man with life in him that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall” (Hawthorne 224). Dimmesdale had come back to the conclusion that only way to ease his guilt was to publicly confess his sins. His physical features became as haggard and ghastly. His sure step from minutes before became unstable and weak. After he calls Hester and Pearl onto the scaffold and confesses, he dies. Dimmesdale dies not because he confessed to sins but because he waited seven years to do it. The guilt had already destroyed him and his death was going to happen no matter if he did or did not

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863 Words | 4 Pages

He was suffering from chest pain because of the secret he was hiding from the Puritan society. He was dying every day from inside because he could not carry the weight of his sin. He was totally consumed by guilt; his “form grew emaciated; his voice ...... his hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of plain” ( Hawthorne 13 ). This quote shows that Dimmesdale’s guilt had an impact on his health.

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1158 Words | 5 Pages

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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1227 Words | 5 Pages

Dimmesdale’s True Colors Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, also the father of Hester’s child, showed prominent parts of his character throughout the story. The first trait the reader becomes aware of is Dimmesdale’s cowardice. He has no intentions of revealing his sin to the public, due to how highly he is seen in the community’s eyes. Remorse, or guilt, is another term that can be associated with Dimmesdale, growing increasingly more prominent as the novel goes on. Cowardice, a lacking of bravery when facing danger, was a trait that Dimmesdale carried.

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660 Words | 3 Pages

Many people are said to be weak individuals, because of how they choose to live their lives. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale is being characterized as a very weak individual who can only make bad decisions that cause him guilt and stress. Dimmesdale denies being the father of Pearl, and having an affair with Hester. Guilt begins to take over his life, and to make himself feel better about hester taking all the punishment, he harms himself.

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573 Words | 3 Pages

For seven years, Dimmesdale pretends he is innocent of adultery and gets praises for his faux act. Dimmesdale even says so himself that he feels extremely guilty and would rather share his crime than to keep it in secret. He obviously does not prefer sharing his crime with the public because he waits seven long years to do so. He was too obsessed with what others think and gossip about him.

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1718 Words | 7 Pages

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.

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741 Words | 3 Pages

In chapter 11 especially Dimmesdale struggles to come to terms with his sin and it weighs heavily on him but he is still not willing to sacrifice his respect within the community. Dimmesdale struggles to come to terms with his sin because he knows that he will be unable to fully redeem himself if he continues to hide his sin from puritan society but he feels extremely conflicted because he doesn't want to sacrifice his reputation. ”They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They fancied him the mouth-piece of Heaven’s messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified”(pg.94).

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488 Words | 2 Pages

First, Dimmesdale’s sin getting revealed was foreshadowed and it sounded as if it had to be revealed in a certain way. While Dimmesdale was with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold, Pearl asked if he would stand with them the next day. To this he said, “Nay, not so, my little Pearl, not so my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow” (Hawthorne 99). If Dimmesdale was not worried about what the public would think once he revealed his sin, then he would have just stood their the next day and revealed it then.

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1582 Words | 7 Pages

When you choose to hold onto a secret, your brain stimulates in your mind just how bad sharing the secret will be, imagining all the possible outcomes. With Arthur Dimmesdale’s decision to conceal his secret he released upon himself negative feelings which led him to self hate and harm. Arthur Dimmesdale’s sin of concealment leads to his downfall because the burden was heavier which led to self punishment, denial of God's worthiness, and eventually death. As a servant of God, it is Dimmesdale’s duty to tell the truth, so lying about adultery for seven years was especially hard on him. Dimmesdale believes that he is a fraud and unfit to lead a town to salvation.

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530 Words | 3 Pages

The Sunlight Christine Quinn once said, “...when you come out of hiding, in whatever way you’re hiding, you get to go out into the sunlight.” The significance of sunlight is crucial to the sustainability and well-being of human life on earth. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses sunlight to symbolize happiness, and it is also used to exemplify freedom. From the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne portrays Hester as deprived of happiness.

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505 Words | 3 Pages

Hester and Dimmesdale are both forgiven because even though they did commit a sin they both confessed and apologized. When Hester and Dimmesdale are trying to leave, Hester takes off the letter and the sun shines on her, she lets her hair down and she is beautiful. “Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour.” When God sees the letter on Hester it almost seems that he frowns upon her with a dark shadow and almost shows that he is upset she still wears the letter. When she takes it off the sun shines on her and she is beautiful like God is happy and proud that she took the letter off.

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497 Words | 2 Pages

Nathanial Hawthorne sets the climax of The Scarlet Letter up in his telling of the scaffold scene. Throughout the scene Hawthorne utilizes parallelism, a subtle spiritual allusion and a heavy dose of irony in order to resolve the main conflict of the book, Dimmesdale’s refusal to tell the truth. Hawthorne presents the scene at a very quick pace; which appeases his audience compared to the slower pace set in earlier chapters. Hawthorne makes clear the thoughts of Dimmesdale by continuously repeating them. Dimmesdale is up on the scaffold and wants nothing more than for Hester and Pearl to join him, “come hither!

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686 Words | 3 Pages

As the moving of story, the “side effect” of the hidden sin has reveal. Dimmesdale become more sick and powerless. As the end of the story, Dimmesdale concede the sin and died as the winner of the fight with hidden sin. Dimmesdale as a combination of saint and sinner, his sin is not committed adultery, but it is that he cannot face the sin and admit it. He wanted to be all perfect in the eyes of the masses, but destroyed his perfectly in the eyes of God.

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886 Words | 4 Pages

Cognition Paper 1 The themes of cognition extend deep beyond the surface. There are many topics that can be discussed in cognitive psychology that have helped contribute to many fascinating discoveries and explain how we think about different topics. The relationship of concepts that I will talk about in this paper is the relationship between connectionist modeling and short-term memory. Both are important concepts in cognitive psychology and play important roles.

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754 Words | 4 Pages

However, at Dimmesdale’s deathbed, when he finally confesses, he realizes that his “death [is] of triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost for ever!” (Hawthorne 383). Dimmesdale finally feels the freedom when he steps down to Hester’s level and onto the scaffold. By lowering his belief if his status, Dimmesdale is able to

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