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Evolution Of Reverend Dimmesdale In The Scarlett Letter

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Evolution of Reverend Dimmesdale One quote by Dave Grohl, “Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, and destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief,” The feeling of guilt is one that may leave others in sorrow and despair. Without confessing what one has done will eventually lead to a life of fear, nervousness, and insecurity. Within the novel The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne gives a good representation of how secret sin will destroy the sinner, which is then shown by the change in character by Reverend Aurthur Dimmesdale. Within The Scarlett Letter Dimmesdale evolves because of the sin that he has committed. First off, in the beginning the start of The Scarlett Letter Dimmesdale is stated to be nervous …show more content…

With Dimmesdale being able to live with his sin his condition becomes exceptionally better, “The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale feelings as he returned from his interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy and hurried him town ward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods seemed wilder more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles and less trodden by the foot of man than he remembered it on his outward journey,” (Hawthorne 148). When he returned to the town and gave his last sermon before he left for England, he saw Chillingsworth within the crowd. Dimmesdale then knew what he had to do in front of all the towns’ people, “God’s eye beheld it! The angels were forever pointing at it! The devil knew it well, and fretted continually with the touch of his burning finger! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with mien spirit, He bids you look again at Hester’s Scarlett Letter! What he bears on his own chest,” (Hawthorne 174). From these final words Dimmesdale then passes away while on the scaffold. On his chest was the mark that Hester wore, the difference is that Hester confessed her sin and bore it on her clothing. When Dimmesdale kept it hidden from everyone else it consumed him and put the mark on his body, symbolizing that secret sin will destroy the sinner. During the story of the Scarlett Letter Reverend Aurthur evolves because of the sin that he had committed. Therefore within the book he started off as a nervous and startled man, which then leads him into getting sick from the guilt inside him, and finally leads him to confess his sin, that came with a price. Guilt is an emotion that can consume someone if it were cancer. Luckily there is confession where anyone can lose their

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