Who Is Dimmesdale's Sin In The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, it is about a young woman named Hester Prynne, who has committed adultery and gave birth to a daughter named Pearl. As a punishment, Hester has to wear a cloth with a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her chest that stands for ‘Adulteress’ for all her lifetime. Meanwhile, Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, who has been missing for two years come back and decides to take a revenge on Hester’s lover. Throughout the novel, Chillingworth has discovered that a young minister named Dimmesdale is a Hester’s lover. Dimmesdale is the worst sinner than Chillingworth because Dimmesdale doesn’t have moral, he is a coward that decides to keep his secret, and he doesn’t have responsibility.

Mr. Dimmesdale’s conscience constantly brought his negative aspects to mind, and caused him to spiral into self hatred and misery. The overwhelming presence of guilt for his offense caused Mr. Dimmesdale unbearable suffering and general unhappiness in knowing that he had not only wronged God, but Hester and the entire community as well.

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.

Dimmesdale has yet to reveal the truth, which, so far, has been devouring him,physically and mentally. Since this good reverend is so spiritual, he cannot reveal his truths to the town so simply. He is of the Puritan faith and being a follower of that, the sin of adultery is a very grand sin. The whole town would look down on him as if he were a hypocrite. Which in fact, he is, but his sin of adultery in that town would have been scoffed at just as Hester’s has. The reverend is so well liked by the townsfolk that

Another effect on Dimmesdale, seen as his guilt slowly wears him down, is how he compares his actions to those of Roger Chillingworth. This is clearly seen when Dimmesdale claims to Hester, "We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man 's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!” (Hawthorne 185). Even in the privacy of the forest, he did not want to accept the full reality of his actions. This is a step forward for him, however, because he chooses to actually say aloud that what he did was wrong, just not as wrong as Chillingworth’s terrorizing of him. Eventually, Dimmesdale is able to confess to the public his sin, and this is due to his longing to escape the torture Chillingworth has been putting him through. Dimmesdale is no longer affected by the guilt that his actions brought about, so Chillingworth has no reason to aggravate him anymore. Sadly for the reverend, the shame

God does not like the sin of adultery. He does not like lying. He does not like hypocrisy. There are two roads that one can choose. In the end, what may seem like the easy way may have far greater consequences than the hard way. Arthur Dimmesdale chose the easy path and learned that the pain of guilt is far greater than the pain of shame.

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.

Dimmesdale is constantly harming himself because of his sin. He whips himself on a regular basis feeling as if it is only right to punish himself for his sin. He starves himself as well. Every time that he whips or starves himself he grows weaker. Everyone sees him getting weak and they start to worry. He lives with the physician so he should start to feel better but he constantly gets worse. The author writes, “How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph!” (Hawthorne page 238). Though Dimmesdale is successful in his job his heart and body are failing him. He has done so much harm to himself all because of his sin.

Dimmesdale is the minster of the town, which means that he has several responsibilities and he is surrounded by the idea that he should live without sin to be an exemplar of the town. This creates pressure for Dimmesdale because he understands the severity of the sin he has committed. He feels like a failure to his followers and that he is unfit to be the minster anymore and that his life has no more meaning since he betrayed God. The narrator states “…on a 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 tempt him…”, which is exactly what Dimmesdale did. He refused to confess when Hester was on the scaffold which left him to hide is

               The fact that Dimmesdale is a hypocrite causes him to experience increased torment due to his guilt.  Dimmesdale beautifully illustrates Hawthorne’s point, because if he were not such a highly religious man, then he would not care about his crime.  However, he does care, and he inflicts torment on himself, including long periods of fasting. In addition to hours of staring at himself in the mirror, he could also be caught numerous times in his closet, whipping himself and burning the letter "A" on his chest.   Or he could be seen at the scaffold in the wee hours of the morning, practicing how he is going to confess the next day. Deluding himself by pretending that his

            The agony that Reverend Dimmesdale was feeling throughout the novel had many origins.  For example, his conscience had a great negative effect on him.  By keeping his sin a secret, he internalized the pain that is inevitably a consequence of sinning.  The anguished Dimmesdale struggles to pacify his conscience as it consumes his very being.  "With every successive Sabbath, his cheeks grew paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before."  This shows that while Hester's pain was a mental anguish, the Reverend had to deal with both mental as well as physical pain.  Each time Dimmesdale stood in front of his congregation, he felt weaker and more ashamed.  Dimmesdale's pain could be seen not only in his demeanor but also by the clutching of his chest.  Throughout the novel, the Reverend could be seen placing his hand over his heart, as if the pain of seeing Pearl, or talking to Hester, or merely realizing what he has done, was too much for him to bear.  Pearl often times is quoted noticing the Reverend's strange habit- "A strange, sad man is he (Dimmesdale), with his hand always over his heart!"  An analogy can be made that the Reverend covers his heart from eyes that can see

Is dimmesdale forgiven? To me I do not think dimmesdale is forgiven for everything he has done in his lifetime. In my eyes dimmesdale should not be forgiven for what he has done. Everything dimmesdale has done have been bad sins which would push him farther and farther away from God. If he is pushed far away from God is less likely for him to be forgiven. There are many reasons I don’t think he is forgiven.

In The Scarlet Letter, the letter A has a symbolic meaning that seemed to change as the

Hester Prynne’s ability to sustain her stability and strength of spirit is the express result of her public guilt and penance. She was Arthur Dimmesdale’s partner in adultery, but she is used by Hawthorne as a complete foil to his situation. Unlike Dimmesdale, Hester is both strong and honest. Walking out of prison at the beginning of the novel, she decides that she must “sustain and carry” her burden forward “by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink with it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief” (54). Hester openly acknowledges her sin to the public, and always wears her scarlet letter A. In the forest scene, she explains to Dimmesdale that she has been truthful in all things except in revealing his part in her pregnancy. “A lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side” (133). Even Dimmesdale himself realizes that Hester’s situation is much healthier than his own when he states, “It must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart” (92-93). This life of public shame and repentance, although bitter, lonely, and difficult, helps Hester retain her true identity while Dimmesdale seems to be losing his.

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.