Prynne And Arthur Dimmesdale's Sin In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a central theme established throughout the story is how sins negatively affect the people who commit them. There are many instances of this in the story, as two of the main characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, are related to each other through a sin (adultery) and both suffer because of it. However, Prynne displays her sin publicly in the form of a scarlet letter while Dimmesdale hides it from the public in order to maintain his reputation as a respected minister. This hidden sin crushes Dimmesdale mentally and physically throughout the story, but it is in one scene in Chapter 17 that the effect of his hidden sin on him becomes especially evident. By showing the internal conflict of

Hawthorne uses several similes to express the magnitude of Dimmesdale’s deception of the Puritan churchgoers, comparing Dimmesdale’s face to one that has “the light of heaven beaming from it”. In this comparison, Hawthorne asserts that the churchgoers not only respect Dimmesdale, but they idolize him, making his pain and guilt worse by reminding him of his deception. He also compares Dimmesdale’s words to those of the Holy Spirit, who descends from heaven during the Christian Pentecost, which is ironically a sort of “grace” for sinners such as Dimmesdale. Additionally, Hawthorne uses strong diction with a connotation of guilt and shame, such as “misery”,”delusion”,”ruined”, and “polluted” to accurately describe how Dimmesdale’s sin and resulting moral hypocrisy has been weighing him down. Hawthorne then uses a rhetorical question in which he juxtaposes Dimmesdale’s “ruined” and “polluted” soul and the “redeemed” and “purified” ones of his audience to imply that due to the hypocrisy brought on by his sin, Dimmesdale doesn’t think that he has the right to be a minister or to be a holy figure to the Puritans. These comparisons further convey Dimmesdale’s feelings of guilt and systematic dehumanization due to those

This alliteration, referring to his failed attempts at repenting through self-harm, or in other words, at gaining “penance but no penitence”, also carries a connotation of desperation and guilt to add to the sad and tortured tone of the scene as a whole. Hawthorne then expands on the effects of the hiding of one’s sin by comparing Dimmesdale’s pain from an internal source (his hidden sin) to that of Hester, caused by a well-known external source: the scarlet letter. This comparison is critical, as it implies that while a revealed/repented sin is manageable, as proven by Hester, a hidden one is painful, harmful, and in Dimmesdale’s case, deadly. Finally, a hypothetical situation is then used to voice Dimmesdale’s desperate wish for somebody to actually see him as who he truly is, rather than as a person of “mock holiness”. This hypothetical situation conveys Hawthorne’s message about sin- that to truly be alive, one must acknowledge their sins and repent, and that Dimmesdale, by not revealing himself is killing himself from the