In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, numerous perspectives show the different ways in which people deal with their sins and keeping secrets. The composed manner of Hester Prynne is contrasted with the weakened Arthur Dimmesdale to reveal the effects of secrets on the mind. The longer one tries to hide a shameful secret, the faster it will deteriorate them from the inside.…
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…
Reverend Dimmesdale is one troubled man. He is a brilliant speaker, a kind man, a wise reverend – everyone loves this guy. However, he was also Hester’s illicit lover and the father of her child, Pearl. He remains silent about his sin, even while he publicly urges Hester to reveal the name of her lover.…
The Scarlet Letter tackles topics rarely discussed in that time period. The book relates the harshness of an over-religious community. As well as the strength of a single woman and her trials with an unforgiving religion. The way Hawthorne depicts Hester shows the readers that, despite her circumstances, she can remain strong and accept the consequences of her sin. She never denies her sin and accepts the punishment that was given to her by her Puritan community. This woman, who bore her punishment alone and lived through a storm of ridicule, seems very powerful. Dimmesdale, although he does not bear any public punishment, he creates his own private punishment. Mentally, Dimmesdale undergoes very severe punishment. [Thesis] In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the principle characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, change over the course of the book in personality, appearance, and social status.…
When Dimmesdale falls into a deep sleep at noon-day, Chillingworth comes into the room and look Dimmesdale’s hidden chest. Chillingworth is known as an intelligent and warm physician in the community, however, his mind is totally changed because of anger against the adultery between Hester and Dimmesdale. Although Dimmesdale mostly attempts to hide from Chillingworth one of his feelings which brings him sickness, Chillingworth recognizes…
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, written in 1850, is a product of the literary struggle between Classicism and Romanticism. Classicism is based upon writing in a traditional tone that involves no emotion, while Romanticism is the idea of letting emotion flow through literary outlets, such as a novel. This struggle is plainly embodied in the character of Hester Prynne, who must contain her passionate personality to the guidelines placed before her in a strict Puritan society. Within a Puritan society, committing a sin is viewed as the worst possible thing one could do and one must be punished accordingly for it. "In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne turned back to the age of his first American ancestor for a historical background against which to display a tragic drama of guilt--revealed and concealed, real and imagined--and its effects on those touched by the guilt" (Dictionary of Literary Biography, 3). Guilt is a strong after-effect of sin within The Scarlet Letter. The consequences and effects of sin are different to every person who commits one. The novel, The Scarlet Letter opens as the narrator states that Hester Prynne and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale have committed adultery and that Hester has borne a child named Pearl. Hester is punished publicly for her sin of adultery by the placing of a scarlet letter on her breast and public humiliation, while Dimmesdale does not confess to the sin and is spared public scorning for it. Instead, Dimmesdale must seek inner redemption through physical beatings and praying, with little success. Hawthorne utilizes his novel to trace the less visible, long-range effects of a sin such as adultery, in the harsh setting of Puritan society through Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Hester Prynne in order to illustrate how an obsession with vengeance or a devotion to atonement can destroy a person's spirit or personality.…
The medication was actually harming Dimmesdale’s health and Chillingworth knew this. Dimmesdale first denied Chillingworth’s help because Dimmesdale said he deserved his sickness; however, he couldn’t stand it so he accepted Chillingworth’s help. The day Dimmesdale revealed his scarlet letter, Chillingworth tried to stop him from revealing his sin to the crowd. Dimmesdale gave the crowd a sermon, which was said to be his best, most inspiring, and truthful sermon ever. When the crowd saw the letter A on Dimmesdale’s chest, they believed that Chillingworth’s potions were the cause of Dimmesdale’s chest being imprinted. The crowd is not raged at the adultery he committed with Hester because Dimmesdale was well respected in New…
Those who keep their sins and feelings to themselves cause themselves only anguish and despair. In The Scarlet Letter, a romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a young man who achieved fame in England as a theologian and then immigrated to America. In a moment of weakness, he and Hester Prynne, a young, beautiful, married woman whose husband is away in Europe, become lovers. Although he will not confess it publicly, Dimmesdale is the father of her child; also, he deals with the guilt by tormenting himself physically and psychologically, developing a heart condition in the process. Dimmesdale is an intelligent and emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of eloquence and persuasiveness. His commitments to his congregation are in constant conflict with his feelings of sinfulness and need to confess. He lives behind a false self for many years while unknowingly living beside Hester's husband, finally his true self appears and he is redeemed of his sins as he admits them publicly. Selfhood can be achieved when a hypocritical persona is rejected and the true self consistently emerges. Dimmesdale is shown as the protagonist of the romance through Hawthorne's use of characterization, conflict, by showing the transformation of Dimmesdale, and by showing that Roger Chillingworth and Dimmesdale's own guilt oppose him.…
Unlike Hester, Dimmesdale chose to hide his sin from the public, and, as a result, his guilt grew immensely as time went on which would eventually amount to his death. Dimmesdale’s guilt from his sin of adultery had been steadily increasing over the years. Then one night after moving in with Chillingworth, Dimmesdale tried to remedy this by “...inflicting a hideous torture on himself,” (Hawthorne 234) using a bloody scourge to whip himself, but to no avail. Since Dimmesdale’s suffering only continued after this event, it demonstrates how only confession can act as a remedy for his guilt. The weight of Dimmesdale’s guilt only grew stronger after this event destroying until he broke down and confess. After years of torment from his guilt, Dimmesdale…
He passes by the prison door that is marked by rusted iron, and by the scaffold that has witnessed the ignominy of many, yearning for freedom from the unyielding grasp of his weighty secret. As he continues walking, he attempts to prevent the burden of his heavy heart from weighing him down, placing his hand over his heart to shield the invisible wound from the eyes of passersby. His agony is one that is beyond description, a deleterious pain experienced by the soul rather than the physical body. Such torment is that which Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, endures as a result of his irreparable sin of adultery. Within his novel, Hawthorne places an emphasis on the psychological and emotional effects…
The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era, adultery was taken as a very serious sin, and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin, their lives change, Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery, and she is constantly being tortured and is thought of as less than a person. Dimmesdale walks around with his sin kept as secret, because he never admits his sin, his mental state is changing, and the sin degrades his well-being. Chillingworth is Hester’s husband, the man he cheats on with Dimmsdale. He also changes with the effects of the sin. He is on a quest for revenge, on a quest to find the father and to torture him. This changes the type of man he was. Throughout the Scarlet Letter, the main characters undergo a lot of change and transformation.…
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the Reverend Dimmesdale is the central conflict of the story. He is torn between his need to accept and pronounce his sin and Pearl as his daughter and his love of freedom. His demeanor drastically changes from the first scaffold scene, where he is seen as a two-faced criticizer to the third and final scaffold scene, where he humbly repents and acknowledges his sin publicly. The three scaffold scenes in the book are very important, as they portray Dimmesdale’s gradual advancement from total hypocrite towards complete atonement for his sin.…
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance novel The Scarlet Letter unravels the tragic plot of the characters’ secrets being broadcast throughout the town. As Hawthorne uses a dramatic tone, he illustrates how Chillingworth and Hester despise each other however, they share a secret. After all, Hester revealed the truth to the Puritan world which created a dramatic scene. Overall this affected the naive and delicate Dimmesdale and his view of his perfect physician, Chillingworth.…
The scarlet letter is a tragedy. The puritan society is responsible for Dimmesdale 's downfall because its members expect him to be perfect, and he is not. His inability to give the people what they require from him ultimately leads to his downfall. Dimmesdale has an affair with Hester Prynne, a married Puritan woman. Hester gives birth to their daughter, Pearl. "Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them; always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother 's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester 's brow" (164).…
One of the main aspects and purposes of The Scarlet Letter, was to illustrate the differences between the public humiliation of a person about their sin's, or the private suffering of a persons guilt and sin in their private acts. The fact that Hester had not just one of these,but both to deal with in her life. Besides the fact that she kept Dimmesdales secret from the rest of the colony of his sin, but on top of that she was made to wear a letter "A" upon all her clothing an was to never take it off. The us that Dimmesdale is dealing with the private guilt which some say is worse than the public guilt, but others would say the exact opposite of this.…