Dimmesdale 's Struggle Between Responsibility And Passion

Hester and Dimmesdale begin talking in the next chapter. The way that Hawthorne writes their conversation you can almost feel the love that both Hester and Dimmesdale feels toward each other. As their conversation grows deeper Dimmesdale asks Hester if she founds peace, she replies by looking at the scarlet letter, which is a symbolism on how Hester as if she will never find peace as long as she wears this letter, when she returns the question Dimmesdale respond by saying he is miserable. I feel as though Dimmesdale will always be miserable no matter how much charity work he does at the church, the guilt of being a hypocrite is eating him alive. All Dimmesdale wants is a friend or an enemy that knew his secret. When Hester tells Dimmesdale about Chillingworth and how he is her husband I could not help but snicker. His ignorance is astonishing, even the puritans realized that Chillingworth was becoming wicked. Dimmesdale proclaims that he can no longer live under the same roof as Chillingworth, which is when Hester suggest moving back to

‘Honesty is the best policy’; ‘Always be yourself”, are common phrases many parents tell their children and as common as they may be, being honest and being true yourself contributes to individual happiness and contentness. ‘The Scarlet Letter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel that dives deep into these key themes of honesty and integrity and the consequences of doing the opposite action. One of the main characters, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a minister in 17th century Puritan New England who has deteriorating health because of his lies and guilt. Dimmesdale commits adultery with a beautiful woman in the town, Hester Prynne, whose husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns from Europe later on. Pearl, who is a product of Hester and

Life is unpredictable, and through trial and error humanity learns how to respond to conflicts and learns how to benefit from mistakes. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a character who changes and gains knowledge from the trials he faces, but first he has to go through physical, spiritual, and emotional agony. In the midst of all the havoc, the young theologian is contaminated with evil but fortunately his character develops from fragile to powerful, and the transformation Dimmesdale undergoes contributes to the plot’s climax.

There is a fine line between hypocrisy and cowardice.  Arthur Dimmesdale, a principal character in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter provides a perfect example of how thin that line can be.   The Scarlet Letter relates a story about sin and the many consequences of not having strength of character.  The true nature of Reverend Dimmesdale's character has been debated since the first publication of the novel.  Dimmesdale is considered by many to be a hypocrite because he cared more about protecting his reputation than he did about protecting the woman he loved.   Others view the Reverend in a more sympathetic light and see him as not a hypocrite, but as a good man

Throughout the novel of the Scarlet letter, Hawthorne expresses many themes such as guilt, isolation, and pride all within the characters. Although, many of the same characters share the same themes with each other. In my opinion, Dimmesdale, clearly shows the most guilt within himself about Hester. He constantly struggles with the fact that he’s the father of her child, and what gravely sin he has committed. With his battle of himself, including his cowardice, he punishes himself over his guilty consciences about Hester. He battles with the fact that he is a known Reverend and high up in the community: and knows that people will leave, punish, and lose all respect for him. Going back to his guilt with himself, he severely punishes himself as shown in chapter 11.

Guilt can destroy someone mentally. According to The Scarlet Letter, it can destroy someone physically as well. Dimmesdale is one of the main characters who chose to keep his sin a secret. Not only does he have to live with the knowledge and guilt of what he did, but he has to constantly pretend that he is more pure than he is. The people of the Puritan town tortured him in a way, because the large amount of praise they gave the minister just made him more guilty and remorseful. The novel The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne takes place in a 1600’s Puritan community named Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dimmesdale has had an affair with the main character, Hester Prynne. He never confessed to his actions, so he never suffered any direct consequences. Because of this, the puritan town’s view of Dimmesdale stays relatively the same throughout the novel, until the ending. Dimmesdale has been kept down heavily from the guilt and remorse brought from keeping his sin a secret.

Within the pages of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, the character of Arthur Dimmesdale, minister in the puritan society, changes tremendously. Specifically in chapters nine through eleven is where his change is most evident. In chapter 9, on page 116, Hawthorne offers up an intricate description of Dimmesdale, his newly discovered sin, and how he is dealing or rather not dealing, with the repercussions of his sin. This description depicts Dimmesdale’s epic struggle with his sin while being a minister in such an oppressive society like the Puritans, and how the deed is slowly eating him alive.

Unlike Hester’s sin of adultery, which she redeemed through charitable and amicable behavior, Chillingworth’s misdeed is one of malice and remains largely unredeemed at the end of The Scarlet Letter. At the beginning of the novel, Chillingworth makes a point of befriending Dimmesdale only so that he may gradually siphon away the minister’s liveliness and vigor, a phenomenon that Hawthorne alludes to by comparing Chillingworth to a blood-sucking leech. As his hatred develops further, Chillingworth “[grows] emaciated, his voice… [becoming] a certain melancholy prophecy of decay” (9). This consequence of Chillingworth’s spite, which haunts him physically so that he becomes a gaunter, more harrowed and wretched version of himself, becomes increasingly

In conclusion, having lost his perspective on life because of his sin of adultery, Arthur Dimmesdale, in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, suffers physical, spiritual, and mental agony. The sin of adultery affects Dimmesdale is such a way that the guilt of committing it is the reason as to why he suffers this agony. Knowing that he cannot get the best of both worlds, he is torn between the two different ways of looking at his consequences; either confessing his sin to the public and freeing himself from this guilt, or confessing his sin to the public and losing entire his

Arthur Dimmesdale’s first sign of selfishness appeared just as the novel began. As Hester Prynne stood on the scaffold in the first scene, Dimmesdale could have confessed the truth to the whole town then, but chose not to. Dimmesdale’s self-centeredness allowed him to stare straight into Hester’s eyes during her punishment and remain quiet, even though he should have been up there accepting the punishment as well. Dimmesdale displayed another heartless act in the Governor's garden. As Hester plead for her rights to keep Pearl, Dimmesdale showed no sympathy to confess the truth.

Chillingworth suspects Dimmesdale is Hester’s accomplice and Pearl’s father, however, he never actually does or plans anything to harm Dimmesdale but rather he wishes to dig in the “direction,” of the “vein,” of truth (Hawthorne 118.) Chillingworth wants to find out about the father so he can know the truth, but he never once states nor wishes to create a painful or deadly environment. While he does bring up repressed memories from Dimmesdale he never actually intends for Dimmesdale to commit suicide. Not only that, but Chillingworth’s entire goal from the beginning was to let the father “be known,” (Hawthorne 59). His intentions were clear from the beginning and thus he cannot be held responsible for a death he did not cause.

However, as the story continues, Chillingworth experiences a substantial transformation as his bright minded and non-violent character began shifting to a darker spirit. After it was so clear to Chillingworth about Hester’s unfaithfulness, he began to develop the feeling towards vengeance against Dimmesdale, the man Hester had the affair with. The theme revenge in the novel is when the character Chillingworth truly depicted an obscure persona with his violent actions of attempting to murder reverend Dimmesdale several times. The ultimate desire of damaging Dimmesdale’s reputation became Chillingworth’s main focus and it completely changed his respect for others and his ability to make rational choices. His change from representing a morally intelligent man internally to developing a depraved personality was effectively demonstrated when Chillingworth used medical expertise and practices for attempting to poison Dimmesdale and manipulate him to confess the crime he felt guilty about. Hawthorne also manages to use imagery to portray Chillingworth’s transformation to an evil

Even though the Puritans had their own idea of punishing sins, Hester too, knew that leaving Boston would not erase the sin she’s hold. After deciding to stay in Boston, Hester sews a piece of gold thread around the scarlet letter to show acceptance of her sin instead of cowering in shame as the village thought she would. Because Chillingworth’s revenge is on Dimmsdale, he attempts to get as much information on him as possible which is why in chapter 9, Hawthorne compares Chillingworth to a leech. Eventually, Chillingworth moves in with Dimmsdale as his doctor. This chapter shows just how sin feeds off sin because the two men hold sins, but unlike Hester, they hide it.

While Hester stands in front of the townspeople, he dramatically pleads with her to “speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer!” (Hawthorne, 65). Obviously, Hawthorne designs this to be a thoroughly ironic situation. Not only is it odd that the reverend, of all people, would commit adultery; but it is ironic that he would pressure Hester so heavily to essentially expose him. From this point in the novel on, Dimmesdale is engaged in a constant internal struggle with himself; he can’t bring himself to admit the truth, yet he suffers an intense sense of guilt for staying quiet.

While it may seem that Dimmesdale evil and that his actions may lead to that assumption, but Arthur Dimmesdale is not evil nor immoral. However, Arthur does many things that have him teeter on the edge of evil. Whether he is rejecting Hester into his sermons, making his sermons on her and using Hester as an example or harboring his sins to himself and forcing Hester to endure her sin alone.