The Scarlet Letter : The Psychological Importance Of Salvation

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 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.

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

Because of Dimmesdale’s connection with the Puritan Church and his unconfessed sin, his mental health deteriorates to the point of delusion. In order to lessen the guilt caused by his sin, Dimmesdale often practices nightlong fasts and vigils. Those fasts and vigils fail to lessen his guilt because they constitute a private confession. Because of the lack of public confession Dimmesdale starts to believe that he lives a lie; Dimmesdale symbolizes a moral compass for the Puritan community but is an unpunished adulterer. Dimmesdale and the Puritans believe that “to the untrue man, the whole universe is false” (Hawthorne 133). Hawthorne means that untrue men, such as Dimmesdale, create a fake reality in which those untrue men live in. Since Dimmesdale is an untrue man, his perception of what is real and what is false starts to slip, and he begins having visions of his bastard daughter pointing her finger at “the clergyman’s own breast” and because Dimmesdale creates a false reality, his visions and hallucinations combine with actual reality (Hawthorne 132). The guilt from Dimmesdale’s false life grows to the point that his “[delusions] were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with” (Hawthorne 133). When there is “no peril of discovery”, an attempt to publically

Mr. Dimmesdale commits a sin but does not confess for fear of humiliation and hatred. By not confessing, he pays the price physically and emotionally. By physically hurting himself, he presumes it replaces the conflict of not exposing his true self to the community. He is held accountable for his actions at a personal degree of suffering. On the other hand, the community and townspeople are accountable for a high degree of the reverend’s actions. On the scaffold the night Mr. Dimmesdale stood with Pearl and Hester, he rejected holding his daughter’s hand in public because “...all the dread of public exposure that had so long been the anguish of his life had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction...” (Hawthorne 149). He feels like he has to conform to society to be accepted, and it results in the failure of taking Pearl’s hand in public and divulging the truth. The townsfolk are more responsible for Dimmesdale’s actions because they create a life where wrongdoing is the ultimate sin, and forgiveness is omitted.

One main theme present in the work "The Scarlet Lette" is that of sin and guilt. Nathaniel Hawthorne attempts to show how guilt can be a form of everlasting punishment. The book represents sin and guilt through symbolism and character development. In his novel, "The Scarlet Letter", Nathaniel Hawthorne explains how the punishment of guilt causes the most suffering among those affected.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne paints a picture of two equally guilty sinners, Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale, and shows how both characters deal with their different forms of punishment and feelings of remorse for what they have done. Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale are both guilty of adultery, but have altered ways of performing penance for their actions. While Hester must pay for her sins under the watchful eye of the world around her, Reverend Dimmesdale must endure the heavy weight of his guilt in secret. It may seem easier for Reverend Dimmesdale to live his daily life since he is not surrounded by people who shun

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.

“Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait which your worst may be inferred!” (177) This quote was explained by Hawthorne to explain that humans should wear their weaknesses on their sleeves so they can realize their weaknesses and form them into their strengths. Nathanial Hawthorne attempted to point out that even though Hester wore her Scarlett letter proudly, the townspeople would rather hide them, and point out their problems onto other people.

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.

Hawthorne uses the strong emotion of despair that overwhelms Arthur Dimmesdale, a beloved reverend in the town, to show how pretending to be the pure, sinless man that the town believes him to be causes him great pain, but by confessing he was relieved from his suffering. Romanticism encourages the acceptance of strong emotion, and embraces the free expression of feelings, unlike the Puritans, and in Dimmesdale’s case the emotions were mostly negative. Dimmesdale has been bearing the guilt of his sin for several years after his daughter Pearl’s birth, while Hester has been isolated and able to move on. This has enabled him to keep his religious position in the town, and his status with the townspeople. He attempts to continue the image society has of

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

In “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne presents the consequences of sin as an important aspect in the lives of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingsworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. The sin committed, adultery, between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale had resulted in the birth of their innocent little girl, Pearl. This sin ruined the three main characters’ lives completely in different ways. With the sin committed, there were different ways the characters reacted to it: embracing the sin, concealing the sin, and becoming obsessed and consumed with it. With each reaction to the sin there were also different actions of redemption.

"The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent!" This quote from Jean Baptiste Racin summarizes The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne in one sentence. The novel's main focus is on three main characters and how the sins they commit affect their lives in the strict Puritan town of Boston around the year 1642. Hawthorne was very knowledgeable of his Puritan ancestry and shows it by incorporating some important thoughts and traditions into this story about sin and confession. Throughout the novel, the physical, social, mental and emotional changes that result from sin in the lives of the characters are never positive and the outcome of their spiritual