Hypocrisy In Scarlet Letter

In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the respected minister Arthur Dimmesdale deceives his community, preventing the townspeople from seeing the truth that he has sinned and hidden his secret. When his guilt finally overcomes him, he fantasizes about confessing the secret of his adultery to his congregation seven years after he committed the sin, but the people do not believe what he says. Rather than believing him, they believe the deception he has been showing them. He shows the community a perfect image of an innocent preacher, when he knows that he is really a sinner. He expects them to be angry and make him leave the pulpit when they hear his veiled confession, but instead “they heard it all, and did but reverence him the more” (Hawthorne
He emphasizes his wish to be punished by saying, “What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him—yea, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin?” (50). Dimmesdale views himself as a hypocrite because, as a preacher, he warns his congregation about sin and everyone thinks he is perfect, but he is really a sinner. He does not want to feel like one; he wants to confess and feel free from his sin. He sees the meteor as a symbol for his adultery because he has not been punished like Hester has. Therefore, he does not think he should be forgiven, and he cannot forgive himself, for he feels that his burden is too great to be relinquished without retribution. Dimmesdale feels that Hester should be grateful that her punishment is out in the open, because he would rather his shame be public than private, claiming that private guilt is harder to bear. He tells her that standing on her “pedestal of shame” is better than “[hiding] a guilty heart through life” (50). He urges her to proclaim that he is Pearl’s father, but Hester would rather let him choose to confess for himself whenever he is ready, so she remains quiet. Dimmesdale wants to receive punishment so he can work for his forgiveness. He expresses this wish by saying,
This innocent interpretation is viewed as a sign that their newly-deceased governor is in heaven. This interpretation supports the Puritan expectations of innocence and purity. These Puritans are, to some extent, forced to show a perfect, sinless, Christian version of their real selves. Although this community expects perfection and sinlessness, it contains innumerable secrets and hidden sins—like Hester and Dimmesdale’s adultery—that people are expected to hide. Another expectation of this society is conformity, especially conforming to society's opinions and beliefs. This is exemplified when the everyone in the community claims to see the same symbolization in the meteor. No one wants to feel isolated from their community, so everyone conforms to the opinion of the rest of the community. This idea of conformity is demonstrated when the sexton says that he saw the meteor—“a great red letter in the sky,—the letter A,—which we interpret to stand for Angel” (118). It is understood that by saying “we,” he is referring to the community as a whole. The sexton tells Dimmesdale what the community thinks so he can conform to their opinion and not be or feel isolated because he has a different opinion. In this situation, the sexton’s actions support conformity to the community’s