Change and Progress: Obstacles to Overcome in the Real World

By revealing this small, hidden regret, he exposes Hester’s tortured state of mind. Unable to reach salvation in the town she desired to live in, she regretfully decided to leave and abandon her sorrows. The burden society placed on her with the scarlet letter was too demanding for her to handle any longer. Similarly, Arthur Dimmesdale was distressed from his ignominy. Afraid of societal repercussions, Dimmesdale had been “overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast” (102). Society’s extensive honor toward him exacerbated his pain, thus causing society to trap Dimmesdale; this prevented him from revealing his dark secret and reaching salvation. Additionally, he began to picture his surroundings as an obstacle designed to hinder his path to redemption. His shortcoming to reach salvation agonized Dimmesdale to the point where he was incapable of recalling “[any] text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immorality of

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale takes the easy way out and does not tell the community that he is the one that committed adultery with Hester Prynne, which led to more pain than he saved. Him and Hester Prynne committed adultery together and as a result of that, they have a

Arthur Dimmesdale uses the strategies of ethos and pathos, as well as devices such as rhetorical questions in order to provoke emotion in his audience: Mr. Wilson, Governor Bellingham, and Roger Chillingworth. While the group of men, Mr. Wilson, Governor Bellingham, Roger Chillingworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale are walking in Governor Bellingham’s garden, Hester Prynne and her child Pearl are walking to Governor Bellingham's mansion. There was a rumour spreading, and one that was becoming quite popular among the townspeople, that Pearl, a child of sin, should be taken from her mother. Hester had come to discuss this situation with governor Bellingham and try to persuade him to not take her light away, but he would not listen. In an act of desperation,

Reverend Dimmesdale was a renowned, prideful man stricken with sin and extreme guilt.  From the time Hester and Dimmesdale made love, he was grievous of his sin but he also felt a great love towards her.  Dimmesdale's stubborn pride troubled him greatly, and although he tried many times, he could not confess his sin to his religious followers.  Dimmesdale felt guilt so strongly that he scourged himself on his breast and patterned an “A” into his own flesh, yet he could not confess his sin until his grief grew so great it caused him to perish.  Reverend Dimmesdale's sin was greater than Hester's because he let his pride conflict with his repentance, and let his life be ruined by his anguish.

Nelson Mandela once said, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” In most cases, it is difficult to distinguish and fully understand when you have changed. Whether it be a trivial change in habit to a crucial character transformation, it is best to set oneself up against an untouched canvas, and begin to analyze the newfangled person from there. Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, the concept of identifying one’s changes is apparent in two of the main characters, Pearl and Dimmesdale. Both characters experience their own engenderment of maturity and personal growth, though Dimmesdale’s involvement with it is much more deleterious in comparison to Pearl’s.

The transgressions that Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale perpetrates all begin when he commits adultery, and that causes him to reject his own daughter Pearl and her mother Hester. However, he still puts forward various different forms of atonement to pay for the awful wrong doings. When Hester is standing upon the scaffold Dimmesdale along with the other clergymen “stood in a

“Reality is easy. Deception that's the hard the hard work” -Lauryn Hill. In the novel the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses literary elements such as symbolism, irony and conflict to show deception and secrecy can lead to self-destruction. This relates to the Scarlet Letter because in the book the protagonist character commits an act of sin that was more than just frowned upon. Not only does the community gossip and turn their cheek to the sinner but a sickness comes along from keeping a secret from the community.

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the popular, gifted, young clergyman and in which no expected, was Hester Prynne’s secretive lover. The citizens of Boston saw him as the perfect man, who could do no wrong. Little had they known, his sin was just as bad as Hester’s. Just like Black’s quote stated, Reverend Dimmesdale, acted on his light side, and used his sins to preach his best of sermons. Hawthorne stated on page 131, ‘To the high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed…”. As many can observe, the young clergyman was a tremendous minister. He preached wonderful sermons and truly showed himself to be a man of God. Dimmesdale was a talented young man with a dark side that few people knew of. “…Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must be there” (Hawthorne 131). This shows while he was preaching tremendous sermons, his health started to deteriorate, due to his inner guilt he was holding within himself. Perhaps if his lingering sin had not expended him, he would have been able live a happier, healthier life. However, unfortunately for him, the secret he was keeping was eating at him from the inside out and his darkness was prevailing. Dimmesdale’s sin of keeping the

Dimmesdale doesn’t tell anyone that he’s Hester’s lover and when given the chance to admit his sin, he let it go so many times . There is a time Hester asks him for help when the old minister tries to take Pearl away from her, she says “Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knows me better than these men can. I will not lose my child! Speak for me! Thou knows,—for thou hast sympathies which these men lack!—thou knows what is in my heart, and what are a mother’s rights, and how much the stronger there are when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!” (105). At that time there’s an opportunity that he could tell everyone the truth and stand up for them, but he chooses to hide it instead to admit what he has done and allow everyone to learn from his imperfection. He is the worst sinner because he is a coward that he decides not to confess to everyone even though he has so many opportunities.

In the book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale gets sicker and sicker the longer he holds in his secret sin of Adultery. It takes place in a Puritan society, which was a strict, conservative, and simple group in Boston Massachusetts. The book focuses on the sin of Hester Pryne committing adultery and having a child, Pearl, with a man other than her husband, Chillingworth. Hester gets shamed and laughed at on the scaffold used for public humiliation. The vulnerable and weakening Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale comes closer to confessing to being Pearl’s father throughout the three scaffold scenes. “Sin as sickness” is a major theme in the book that is represented through Reverend Dimmesdale’s internal conflict. The more Dimmesdale

From this sin came a very happy and energetic girl “Pearl”. So from the beginning, we see the sin that was committed. We only know half of who the sin truly belongs. “I thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life.” (Hawthorne 53) This is the first time we get a glimpse of guilt and the possibility that Dimmsdale is the fellow-sinner. As a preacher who speaks against sin, this is extremely hard for him. He wants to tell the truth but Hester won’t let him. This sin begins to completely consume one character the Reverend Dimmsdale. The guilt he feels drives him mad and causes him to carve an “A” into his chest and wonders the streets while asleep trying to let his sin be known. He even sits upon the gallows trying to tell people. The secret sin within this work was the sin of adultery not for Hester but her lover Dimmesdale. Throughout his works he speaks of different sins such is the case in the Ministers Black Veil.

Puritan society is also portrayed in a negative light when observing its effects on Dimmesdale. Arthur Dimmesdale is praised by many in his community as a holy figure and thus a leader, however, he is just as much a sinner as Hester, since together they committed adultery. The fact that he hides this secret in order to preserve this false image of himself shows how much he cares about how he is viewed by society. While many would argue that he does this out of his own free will, there is no doubt that he feels pressure from society to keep his past hidden and maintain this holy facade. Once Dimmesdale dies, some townspeople “affirm that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance … by inflicting a hideous torture on himself” (Hawthorne 230). When they see the letter branded on Dimmesdale, they are shown how he has been tortured by himself and by Chillingworth, as a result of the agony society put him through in hiding his secret of having committed sin. This instance shows how, in a deterministic society, even those viewed as the

Unbeknownst to the community of Boston, their favorite minister was actually Pearl’s father. Reverend Dimmesdale was a young and charismatic preacher who in the very beginning of the story asks Hester to reveal who Pearl’s real father is to the whole community. She refuses to give up the secret. From the beginning of the novel it is clear that Dimmesdale feels guilty for also being a part of Pearl’s creation and Hester’s punishment when he says, “I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer!” He clearly believes that the sin of adultery should be shared by the participants, but for a variety of reasons he does not come clean and instead internalizes his shame. Ironically Dimmesdale becomes an even better pastor as his guilt and shame deepens, his sermons are increasingly popular with his congregation. He openly proclaims to them that he is a sinner and that he has lied to them, but instead of being shocked they consider his proclamation of guilt to be an exaggeration for the sake of his sermon.

Arthur Dimmesdale, a minister, lives his life under the watchful yet admiring eye of the townspeople of Boston and, as a result, becomes a slave to the public opinion. His sin against Hester and Pearl is that he will

The guilt that plagues Arthur Dimmesdale, leads to the climax of the novel, in which Dimmesdale overcomes his inner conflict. Throughout the entire book, Dimmesdale has struggled with trying to reveal what he has done. At first he is to cowardly to do this, but eventually Dimmesdale realizes the only way to redeem himself is to confess his sins and repent. Knowing it is the only way to redemption, Dimmesdale goes before the whole town, with Hester and Pearl, and reveals his sin to the people. Dimmesdale’s