Who Is Dimmesdale's Guilt In The Scarlet Letter

guilt reflected by the letter’s nearness can only be achieved by the will of God, in contrast with Hester’s letter which only reaches her chest.

Dimmesdale’s affliction resulting from his guiltiness affirms that the letter’s proximity reflects his guilt. “Gnawed and tortured” while “suffering under bodily disease,” Dimmesdale’s guilt subjects him to a wild and bestial pain (128). This intense suffering stems from “some black trouble of the soul” due to the darkness of his guilt spiritually afflicting him and perpetually agitating his heart. What is bothering him is tied to a spiritual level, expressing the idea that in a way the trouble has darkened his spirit. Describing Dimmesdale’s repeated failure in confessing his sins, Hawthorne repeats

In the years following the initial sinful act, Hester and Dimmesdale’s response to their sin drifts in opposite directions, but the forest scene serves as an aberration in this pattern, presenting a moment in time where their guilt aligns. For Hester, who has felt the full wrath of society’s punishment, the lessons she has learned about shame and guilt serve as “little other than a preparation for this very hour” to escape her guilt with Dimmesdale, reflecting the intensity to which her heart has hardened. Dimmesdale, who has lived under the crushing weight of his transgression for years, casts off his guilt in the hope that returning to his sin will relieve him of his burden. Adopting outwardly the feelings she has harbored for so long, Hester proclaims that by casting off the scarlet letter, she undoes her guilt, “and make[s] it as if it never had been” (182). Since she plans to go on living in her sin with Dimmesdale, her casting off of the letter and guilt is not forgetting that they ever sinned, but instead her forgetting that what they did was a sin, and thus forgets her guilt. Removing the letter, Hester immediately feels the “burden of shame and anguish [depart] from her spirit,” losing not only her letter but the weight of her guilt as well (182). Tossing the letter so far away that with a “hand’s breadth farther flight it would have fallen into the water,” Hester loses almost all understanding of guilt she possesses (182). Deciding to agree to reunite with Hester, Dimmesdale’s decision to live in his sin makes “a glow of strange enjoyment [throw] a flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast,” implying that his rejection of guilt does something to his letter (182). Later, when Dimmesdale returns to the town, his sudden return to health makes it certain that in some form his letter has either diminished or