Person Vs. Person – Dimmesdale and Hester are afraid that he will not be able to escape from Chillingworth’s care. This is also situational irony because the beginning reason Chillingworth is watching over Dimmesdale is to help him and cure him of his sickness.…
Hester Prynne’s sin in the Scarlet Letter, was adultery. She committed adultery with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. This sin in particular was one of the more frowned upon of the Puritan faith. In result of this sin, she became pregnant and gave birth to Pearl, who becomes the highlight of Hester’s life. Dimmesdale’s sin as recently explained was adultery as well. He as the priest was looked upon as the most honorable man in the community and was supposed to be considered sinless.…
Dimmesdale’s symbol changes throughout the entire book. It starts off by him symbolizing a holy figure since he is the reverend so the Puritan society looks up to him and they don’t expect him to commit a sin. For the most part, he symbolises hypocrisy, in chapter 3, he states “What can thy silence do for him, except to tempt him---yea, compel him, as it were---to add hypocrisy to sin?” (page 65). He knows what what will happen to him if he keeps his sin to himself, but at that point in the book he’s already afraid to let the townspeople know. He goes to preach every week on how bad his sin is and how bad of a person he is but he still keeps it to himself. Since the townspeople don’t know about his sin, they still look up to him as if he were…
Dimmesdale inhabits the shame brought on by religiosity. After sinning twice, first the adultery he commit with Hester and second by lying and hiding the first, Dimmesdale wallows in his own guilt. He begins to have visions of Hester and Pearl pointing out his guilt and of members of the community mocking him. He wishes to stand with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold. He wishes to tell his congregation, "to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was" (125), but he hides this and the guilt gnaws at him. It gnaws at him until…
How can one be assigned the title of suffering the most? This is a complicated question presented in the book, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter is a book that revolves around a sinner named Hester Prynne, a minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, a physician, Roger Chillingworth, and a little girl named Pearl. Hester and Dimmesdale are both who has committed adultery; however, the story starts with Hester being a woman who is branded with a Scarlet Letter A, that represents adulterous, while Dimmesdale is not shown to be the person who Hester had an affair with. Throughout the story, Hester, Dimmesdale, Pearl, and Chillingworth are all in the midst of a troubling situation, while…
First of all, the major difference between Chillingworth and Dimmesdale’s sins is their motives for doing so. When Dimmesdale has the affair with Hester, although there was no clear motive for doing so, it might have been because of love. With Chillingworth, he was only torturing Dimmesdale as revenge. Dimmesdale never planned on committing a sin like how Chillingworth deliberately planned on sinning because he had been conjuring in his mind a plan on how to…
There are a lot of characters that change throughout the story; one of them is Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale engaged in doing a big sin in the puritan society he lived in, Dimmesdale slept with another man’s wife, Hester Prynne and she became pregnant. Hester got punished for doing this sin but Dimmesdale did not admit to committing the sin, so instead he lives with guild and it builds up which makes it worse for him because he is a puritan minister. Since Dimmesdale does not commit to the sin to the public, he instead inflicts humiliation upon himself in private because he isn't punished by the public for committing the sin of adultery. The place where Dimmesdale transforms most throughout the story seems to always be at the same place; The Scaffold.…
The section in which Dimmesdale stood on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl impressed me the most. He conquered his fear and pride, and, as clearly as he could, confessed his crime. He recognized that though he had done an immense amount of penance, of good works, they could not atone for his sin. Only to “show himself to mankind as they would see him at the judgment-seat” would be the true act of penitence.…
Throughout the book, The Scarlet Letter it tells the tale of a woman who committed adultery with a man who she falls desperately in love with, a baby is born out of complete and utter sin. A woman who was outcasted by society, and lived a life of torment but what drives us really insane to where every flaw is cast to those around us. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses characterization to reveal Dimmesdale's central flaw, is selfishness. Hawthorne uses characterization to reveal Dimmesdale's central flaw, selfishness. Selfishness is when you think of completely nothing other than yourself, you do not put others before you, the only thing you are worried about is yourself and how the situation affects you. This flaw is the biggest flaw because…
Chillingworth is like a “treasure-seeker in a dark cavern” (113). He knows Dimmsdale’s true identity and how Hester is associated with him so therefore tries so hard to suck every secret or treasure out of Dimmsdale as if he was his patient, a dark cavern. By investigating Dimmsdale, who will not give up his secret, he becomes his physician; Chillingworth is taking advantage of him. When Chillingworth lives with Dimmsdale, it allows him to get closer and see what he is truly hiding. Chillingworth says that a man “burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician” (113). As a physician, Chillingworth knows all about Dimmsdale; he wants to know as much as he can about him to be vengeful towards Hester and him. Chillingworth causes pain to Dimmsdale when he constantly harps on the fact that Dimmsdale has a secret and that this secret is killing him. Knowing a secret about a man is a way for a person to harm him. By taking advantage of his relationship with Dimmsdale, Chillingworth shows his corrupt…
When Chillingworth finds the letter A on Dimmesdale’s chest he is freaked because he knows who the father of his child is. This is important for many reasons the main one being that Dimmesdale has cause himself great bodily harm. This is showed when “Laid his hand…eye……” (95). This shows that he has caused himself great bodily discomfort. Another way in which he shows that his body is being destroyed is when he whips himself with a whip constantly. This is showed when “and thus while standing…bodily pain” (102). Dimmesdale destroys his soul constantly and this time it is by being remorse and cowardice. This is explained when “Why, then, had he come hither?...the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance” (101). This shows that Dimmesdale completely destroys him self in so many different…
Dimmesdale, the personification of "human frailty and sorrow," is young, pale, and physically delicate. An ordained Puritan minister, he is well educated, and he has a philosophical turn of mind. There is no doubt that he is devoted to God, passionate in his religion, and effective in the pulpit. He also has the principal conflict in the novel, and his agonized suffering is the direct result of his inability to disclose his sin. In Puritan terms, Dimmesdale's predicament is that he is unsure of his soul's status: He is exemplary in performing his duties as a Puritan minister, an indicator that he is one of the elect; however, he knows he has sinned and considers himself a hypocrite, a sign he is not chosen.…
Chillingworth comes off as an arrogant, entitled snob who thinks that he is better than everyone else. He seems to put himself a peg higher than even the reverends in the story, which seems to fit his stooped, snooping and conniving character to a tee. He is determined to discover the identity of the man that his wife committed adultery with. Dimmesdale is a self-preservationist at this point in the story. He does not want to be punished because of his high standing in the town, but at the same time, he wants to be found out so that the guilt will stop crushing him. He feels guilt and shame and love for others (as well as himself), whereas Chillingworth feels only his…
Every night Dimmesdale is head out his house and start walking to random place without having any acknowledge where the is going. Hester knows something is wrong with Dimmesdale, and she starts talking to Chillingworth about what the did to Dimmesdale. For example, Hester ask Chillingworth, “Hast thou not tortured him enough?” and he said, “No!-no!-He has but increased the debt” (163). Chillingworth keeps add up Dimmesdale debt because Dimmesdale was lying to Chillingworth when they were a best friend, and that made him feel being treachery. The only way that Dimmesdale debt is payoff is when he die because Chillingworth cannot torture him…
It’s easy to think she does because she became an adulteress and faced a novel’s worth of guilt and shame for him. She never seems to resent him for making her face ignominy by herself. In fact, she is deeply concerned for his health and even offers to run away with him: “Thou shalt not go alone!”(136). Though all these actions seem like proof of love, I think Hester does these things for other reasons.…