Lies In The Scarlet Letter

Even though Hester’s sin is the one the book is titled after and centered around, it is not nearly the worst sin committed. Hester learns from her sin, and grows strong, a direct result of her punishment. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. “ Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made her strong... “ Hester also deceived Dimmesdale, also committing the sin of deception. She swore to Chillingworth that she would keep their marriage a secret. She even withheld this from Dimmesdale, whom she truly loved. Hester finally insisted on telling Dimmesdale and clearing her conscience. In this passage, you can see how he grows angry at Hester: “O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!--the indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!”  Dimmesdale does forgive Hester. She has done

At first Hester, agrees to Chillingworth’s terms to keep his real identity a secret. This in return hurt Dimmesdale, her secret lover. She does not stand up to Chillingworth out of fear of the chain effect of damage it would cause. Hester says, “I will keep thy secret, as I have his”, which in essence shows her weakness towards a male. Yet, at the end of the book, she recognizes that she must “do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom [Chillingworth] had so evidently set his gripe”. She comes to the conclusion that hiding Chillingworth’s secret does not help Dimmesdale like she hopes, but in fact, hurts him further. The fact that she realizes this, though, displays her to be an devoted and loyal person. These qualities display many things a female, main character, in those times, did not have much opportunity to play, especially in the role of which Hester plays it.

Roger Chillingworth is a vile man who hides his disgrace of having a disloyal wife and finds pleasure in tormenting the poor Arthur Dimmesdale. When he comes to town at the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth makes Hester promise not to tell anyone that he is her real husband.“ ‘Breath not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband!’…’because I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman…’”(Hawthorne 52-53).

Hester accepts her sin and takes responsibility for her her actions. Society accepts Hester also and sees her as part of society again. There are dire consequences though when someone rejects the sin that they have committed and can ultimately ruin someone's life. Chillingworth and Dimmesdale both are examples of how hiding your sin can ruin your life. Dimmesdale tries to hide that he is the father of Hester’s child and that he committed adultery. Dimmesdale’s health starts to suffer terribly due impart to him hiding his sin from society and that Chillingworth is seeking revenge on Dimmesdale for what he is doing to Hester. They both, in the long run, get weaker and their health starts to worsen due to them committing sin and trying to ignore what they have done. “The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her” (Hawthorne 161). The quote before this shows that Hester took all of the blame for the sin that Dimmesdale had committed and that she was covering up Chillingworth’s sin. This quote also shows that Hester was the face of sin while the other two men were the face of faith and the face of medicine in town. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth were to avoiding sin and act like nothing happened, but

Character Analysis: Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale In particular why would a man, a minister at that, who preaches against sin, lie of a sin he committed, how could he be so selfish? Dimmesdale did wrong doings; never owning up to them instead he decided to desert the women he sinned along with, and act as if he never taken part in it. At the day of her confrontation he said "... I charge 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..."(Hawthorne 26).

As Chillingworth moves in with Dimmesdale to “treat” his illness, the antagonist starts to suspect Dimmesdale as Hester’s lover. The malicious doctor begins to torture Minister Dimmesdale by prodding him about his past and reminding the minister of the sins he himself had committed. Chillingworth had been “a pure and upright man… [but he] now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart… like a sexton delving into a grave…for jewels” (Hawthorne 123). The inimical man does not notice the difference in himself but the audience can obviously see revenge has caused Chillingworth to be a villainous man.

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

Dimmesdale as an individual and through his secret actions symbolize how self-centered and egotistical he is. Both Dimmesdale and Hester committed adultery, but Hester was the one who got all the hatred and disrespect from everyone in the Puritan town. She went through some awful situations with the scarlet letter, and it changed her so much. While she was going through all this pain, Dimmesdale was hiding his sins. This was a selfish act by Dimmesdale towards Hester and Pearl, but not admitting the sin bit him right in the butt. He was torturing himself and receiving physical pain in various ways; he whipped himself, stared at the mirror for periods of time, and starved himself. Even though he didn’t reveal his sin to the public, his heart was still “making itself guilty of such secrets” (127). He felt very guilty for the agony that Hester has been through. She has experienced hatred from herself mentally and from the Puritan people verbally. He didn’t want the people to treat him like they treated Hester; he loves how he gets respect from the townspeople. The only pain he has received was from himself mentally and physically, but not verbal and emotional pain like Hester. He doesn’t want to experience those dreadful moments that she had gone through. This action proves to the readers how Arthur Dimmesdale symbolizes self-centered

Dimmesdale is fearful as he does not want to reveal himself to the public, but rather have Hester reveal his name to the public because she shouldn’t feel, “pity and tenderness” for him. Continuing, he declares that it is worse to, “hide a guilty heart through life,” rather than admitting it to the public and stand on, “thy pedestal of shame.” Hawthorne includes this way of thinking in Dimmesdale because it contributes to the fact that he is morally ambiguous as he knows what he has done is bad, but doesn’t have the courage to admit his sin himself. In this moment, Dimmesdale endeavours at making himself feel ashamed as he talks about himself declaring, “what can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--compel him,” but notably it doesn’t force him. He proclaims that his silence will eventually force him to speak out, yet his fear and pride as a righteous minister takes over him which causes him to not reveal his name.

In a conversation with Chillingworth, Hester recalls a conversation and promise they had made together seven years ago. To enumerate , this promise was the secrecy of the pair’s matrimony to each other; this secret was to be kept at all costs on the pain of revealing the man whom she had the affair with. In the current setting, however, Hester now believes that,“In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!" As shown in this quote Hester has had a complete change of heart concerning Dimmesdale; Hester now feels regret in not simply telling Dimmesdale the truth and making him suffer for seven long years. In addition, Hester feels as if Chillingworth where to have had, “... extort

The importance of his reputation lies on this sin, telling the congregation could ruin everything. Chillingworth says, “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. What can thy silence do for him, except it temp him—yea, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin?” (Hawthorne 65). Here Chillingworth, Hester’s former husband, tries to convince Hester into telling who might be the father.

This concealed sin is the center of his tormented conscience. The pressures on him from society are greater than those on Hester because he is a man in high standing, expected to represent the epitome of the Puritanical ideals. It is ironic that Dimmesdale, who is supposed to be absolutely pure and urges congregation to confess and openly repent their sins, is incapable of doing so himself. He knows the hypocrisy of his actions but cannot bring himself to admit his deed publicly. In resentment of this he punishes himself physically - he is "often observed to put his hand over his heart, with indicative of pain" (ch 9). Dimmesdale's resistance to be true to himself gradually destroys his well being as well as Hester's, and although he eventually declares the truth, his resistance ends him.

The three main characters in the novel are Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale. Hester is an adulteress and has a baby named pearl and she is convicted and her punishment is to wear a scarlet letter “a” upon her chest and to wear it until her death where it will be marked upon her grave as well. Her husband who she cheated on was Roger Chillingworth, which was his alias in the new world. He discovers Hester’s ignominy and is set on finding her partner in the “crime” they committed against him. Dimmesdale is the man who Hester had an affair, although he is the minister and that is a huge scandal for the preacher who speaks against infidelity. Hawthorne makes the relationship acceptable by showing that Hester and Dimmesdale actually love each other opposed to Chillingworth and Hester’s fake love.Chillingworth convinced Hester into marrying him which she never wanted to do in the first place, he only wished to own someone not love them. Chillingworth can be associated to evil because of his wish for revenge and torture to Dimmesdale which are considered the worst kind of sins. Chillingworth is also referred to as a leech which is what

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

Hawthorne had introduced Chillingworth as the victim, not the villain. After all, Hester and Dimmesdale both violated him by engaging in the act of adultery. This causes many readers to sympathize for Chillingworth until he plainly confesses that it was originally himself that sinned: "Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay."(66) Chillingworth knew that Hester didn't love him before they were married, but he was looking for what he