Reverend Dimmesdale In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main characters have different kinds of burdens to carry depending on their level of ownership over their actions and identity. Dimmesdale has the worst burden to bear because he did not own up to his actions until the very end, Hester has to adjust to the punishment that the Puritans gave her, and Pearl has no burden because she is honest. Throughout the novel, they face different obstacles that contribute to their everyday lives that makes it hard to process everything at once. It’s also to show how the characters were able to face the problems and deal with them

In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work , at the same time however, parallels can be drawn between the characters of The Scarlet Letter and of today’s society.

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter conveys the war between passion and responsibility, and how it concerns moral duty. Conflicts which Reverend Dimmesdale faces show readers how difficult it can be to come forward and reveal your sins. The circumstances which victimized Dimmesdale made it harder for him to accept responsibility publicly, which is the foundation of much of this novel. Hawthorne uses Dimmesdale’s character to convey the true struggle between passion and responsibility in The Scarlet Letter. While Dimmesdale yearned to face his sins, his passion overpowered him and took over the

Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, a main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, proves to be a sinner against man, against God and most importantly against himself because he has committed adultery with Hester Prynne, resulting in an illegitimate child, Pearl. His sinning against himself, for which he ultimately paid the

‘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 hard, but accepting that fact makes it easier." This common phrase clearly states a harsh fact that Rev. Dimmesdale, a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, had to face. In this story of deception and adultery set in the Puritan era, Hawthorne introduces Dimmesdale as a weak and cowardly man who refuses to take responsibility for his actions.  The Rev. Dimmesdale is a transitional character in that he is, at the beginning of the novel, outwardly good but inwardly deceitful and by the end of the novel he becomes both outwardly and inwardly truthful.

However, as a revered preacher, Dimmesdale is a part of the authority. He is supposed to be a pious puritan. But he violates the law set by the puritanism. His adultery with Hester is intolerable. In the light of his special profession, he should undertake more sin than normal people.

Secrets can destroy even the most respected people. Sometimes is not the secret itself that drives people into exhaustion, but the emotional baggage that comes with it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Dimmesdale physically deteriorates because of his guilt caused by a dishonorable sin. The Puritan society in which the story is set discourages the idea of the private self, which Hawthorne shows by creating distinctions between the characters’ private and public lives, specifically Dimmesdale’s.

Mr. Dimmesdale is an almost perfect example of the contrast between public and private truth in The Scarlet Letter. The young clergyman is often seen as saint by the public. Many of his sermons throughout the book bring dozens to Christ in the small town. The people of the town even began to say,“The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!”(Hawthorne 246). In private though, Mr. Dimmesdale is actually being eaten alive by the guilt that his sin with Hester gave him. Mr. Dimmesdale’s adulterous act caused

Guilt is an emotional feeling that can shape and mold a person's perception on his views of life. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in 1630’s Boston. A holy man, Reverend Dimmesdale has committed the sin of adultery, but no one knows except for him and the main character Hester Prynne. Unaware of this crime, the townspeople hold Dimmesdale in high regard and view him as a fatherly figure because he is a Reverend. They learn to respect him as a human being when during a sermon he confesses to having committed a mortal sin, but he does not tell them the exact nature of it. Over time, hidden guilt affects him greatly which results in self-inflicted physical harm in the form of self-flogging, fasting and sleep deprivation. He would also suffer through bouts of mental anguish, which would result in him having conversations with himself.

David A. Bednar, the president of Brigham Young University once said “guilt is to the spirit what pain is to the body,” Revered Arthur Dimmesdale of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was a man who not only related to this quote but lived it. After committing one of the gravest sins possible in the Puritan community, Dimmesdale lives with this so-called “pain of the spirit” every day of his life. Not to mention the fact that nobody knows of his wrongdoing so the guilt just continues building inside of himself and has nowhere to let it out. Within this foundation of guilt, any characteristic qualities immerge that would not have usually been there if not for this guilt. Dimmesdale is a suffering man who has become frail and cowardly

Although Hester is forced to wear the scarlet letter in front of her chest publicly as a symbol of crime and the letter has stained her reputation on the outside, Dimmesdale is secretly “wearing” a Scarlet letter and that scarlet letter has burnt him from the inside and has made him suffered everyday as if he is living in hell. As he discriminates himself more and more everyday, he struggles between the unstained divine nature and the flawed human nature. Therefore, he attempts to seek for redemption by “[plies the bloody scourge] on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh” (11, 2321-2322). Dimmesdale’s human nature has been constrained so much that the guilt and self-discrimination inside his mind has split him into two personalities: a public self and a secretive self – the more people worship his public self, the more painful his secret self is. However, As Hawthorne points out that “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true”(XXI, 3500-3501). Therefore, he is tortured deep inside everyday for that he is constantly on the edge of guilt and regret until he finally admits to himself that the paradox inside of him. When the couple finally

The Romantic Period was paralleled during a time in which religion still had a tight grip on the influence of society. Because of this, religious motifs occur frequently in writings, most notably, the idea of sin. This idea of sin can be viewed from the theme that no one is safe from sin’s influences, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book “The Scarlet Letter”. In “The Scarlet Letter” the town minister, Dimmesdale,

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the values of a puritanical society are tested against the sins of its members. The result is a collection of contradictions and paradoxes among the novel’s central characters. Two contrasting characters, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth, are especially tied together under the effect of the original sin within the novel. The original sin is adultery, involving Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale to the detriment of the condition of Roger Chillingworth. The sin drives these two characters, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, into direct opposition. Yet at the same time, these characters mirror each other in their experience and response to the sin, even though they take completely separate paths to reach the same place. Sin, thus, serves as a powerful medium by which the two characters are so intimately connected. It induces similarities in two very different characters and forces the hand of fate to link them in surprising ways. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both contrast and echo each other in a case of apparent contradiction. Together they dramatize the coercive power of sin. Bound together by a single transgressive event, their responses mark them so similarly that they become alter egos of one another.