Many people are said to be weak individuals, because of how they choose to live their lives. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale is being characterized as a very weak individual who can only make bad decisions that cause him guilt and stress. Dimmesdale denies being the father of Pearl, and having an affair with Hester. Guilt begins to take over his life, and to make himself feel better about hester taking all the punishment, he harms himself. A man named Chillingworth, who claimed to be a doctor, made Dimmesdale feel worse about his secret, Dimmesdale let him get in his head. Reverend Dimmesdale was very weak for being a priest and putting no faith into his God. Reverend Dimmesdale is afraid of his town and his people finding out about his sin. As a priest he wants to seem holy and sinless like the people think him to be, so he hides the fact he and Hester committed adultery. When Hester is on the scaffold, Dimmesdale is asked to try and get Hester to confess who the father is, “If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will be made more …show more content…
Chillingworth is trying to find out who the father is and he comes to believe that it is Dimmesdale and manages to get into Dimmesdale’s head like he planned. Chillingworth drops hints to Dimmesdale to try to let him know he knows his secret. He talks about where he go his new medicine and calls Dimmesdale out on his lying in the process, “They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he has done better to confess during his lifetime” (Hawthorne 90). Here chillingworth is telling Dimmesdale that it is better to confess a sin while you are living, than to take that secret to the grave. Dimmesdale here reaches his breaking point and begins to have mental breakdowns and his illness grows
In the moment he sees her on the scaffold, he chooses to change his name and to never reveal his authentic identity. Instead, he uses the alias of a doctor named ‘Chillingworth’. Though not formally a doctor, his background in alchemy and knowledge of herbal remedies allow him to mislead the Puritans. He takes on the job of caring for the town reverend, Dimmesdale. Eventually, he learns this is the man who impregnated his wife, and Chillingworth begins to seek revenge.
And the shame!—the indelicacy!—the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!” , thus presenting verbal abuse. He then guilts her into apologizing for not revealing that Chillingworth was her husband until then, by saying, “Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!—I cannot forgive thee!”. Dimmesdale went further in putting down the images of others by immediately adding how awful he viewed Chillingworth, saying that he “has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart” and implying that Chillingworth was “the worst sinner in the
The young and beautiful Hester Prynne was once married to a man who had been missing for around three years and committed adultery with another man. Considering the time period this was no small action especially since her unnamed partner is Reverend Dimmesdale and in disguise her long lost husband is actually Roger Chillingworth. Both characters are covering up parts of their life that play a big role in who and why they are for their own individual reasons. Dimmesdale is cowardly covering up his crime in order to protect his holy name as well as himself from the shame and embarrassment that the truth will bring.
Dimmesdale’s True Colors Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, also the father of Hester’s child, showed prominent parts of his character throughout the story. The first trait the reader becomes aware of is Dimmesdale’s cowardice. He has no intentions of revealing his sin to the public, due to how highly he is seen in the community’s eyes. Remorse, or guilt, is another term that can be associated with Dimmesdale, growing increasingly more prominent as the novel goes on. Cowardice, a lacking of bravery when facing danger, was a trait that Dimmesdale carried.
However, Dimmesdale’s strong conscience will not rest while his sin goes unpunished, leaving him with a burning desire for both penalty and disclosure. It is illustrated that Dimmesdale’s conscience is plagued after his sin, and this distress intensifies once he learns of Hester’s new place in society, as a matronly figure. Dimmesdale’s hiding of sin and internalization of guilt damages his conscience and tears apart his
Dimmesdale does not confess that he has committed a sin with Hester, and for a brutal seven years, he withholds his guilt inside of him. One of his worst sufferings is Pearl his own daughter rejects him. His child does not love him and washes off the kisses he gives her. Arthur Dimmesdale has the most tribulations without a doubt. He is faced to live with and tormented by not only his overwhelming guilt of sin, but moreover Roger Chillingworth who plagued him almost as much as his own conscience.
Does lying to a community make a person feel better as a sinner? Does acting to a community help hide one’s true self? Arthur Dimmesdale, a hypocrite, depends on lying to survive. He loves but cannot show it in public; he is depressed but tries to hide his pain within his sermons. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
Hawthorne immediately corrects himself, and says that Chillingworth is more like “a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom” (125). These comparisons of Chillingworth to a miner and a sexton, and the truth to gold and a jewel emphasizes this obsession that Chillingworth must finding the truth. Chillingworth is “the leech” and he 's by Dimmesdale’s side making him sick. The longer Chillingworth stays with Dimmesdale, the worse Dimmesdale’s condition gets. This is his newfound passion and his persistence won’t allow him to end this hunt for the truth.
One action, a split second decision can undo all good deeds in a person 's life. This often occurs in novels such as The Crucible by Arthur Miller or The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne where characters make a life altering decision that causes them pain in the end. These character traits are used so often it becomes something of a stereotype, similar to the characters’ personalities in these iconic novels. The authors use cliches to express the idea that kind hearted people can become sinners despite their goodness.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale commits a mortal sin by having an affair with a married woman, Hester Prynne. As a man of the cloth in Puritan society, Dimmesdale is expected to be the embodiment of the town’s values. He becomes captive to a self-imposed guilt that manifests from affair and his fear that he won’t meet the town’s high expectations of him. In an attempt to mitigate this guilt, Dimmesdale acts “piously” and accepts Chillingworth’s torture, causing him to suffer privately, unlike Hester who repented in the eyes of the townspeople. When Dimmesdale finally reveals his sin to the townspeople, he is able to free himself from his guilt.
Erin Joel Mrs. Janosy English 2H P 5 22 October 2015 Quote Explication Dimmesdale is trying to overcome a conflict within his own soul, defying his own religion, and choosing to do wrong by keeping his sin to himself. In a theocracy type community like Dimmesdale's, God is known as the supreme civil ruler, and a crime would be known as a sin. On the other hand, Hester’s sin was made known to the public, receiving the public shame and ridicule she deserved. During the duration of time when the public knew Dimmesdale was hiding his sin, “the agony with which this public tortured him” (Hawthorne 119).
Dimmesdale starts living with Chillingworth so the doctor can keep the feeble minister ‘healthy’; the doctor, reversely, tries to make Dimmesdale feel conflicted about his morals which leads to Dimmesdale obsessively whipping himself “...on his own shoulders” and“... fast[ing]...in order to purify [his] body… rigorously...until his knees trembled beneath him[self]...” (132). He is enveloped in his sin, and cannot escape it unless he tells the truth. In fact, Dimmesdale could not stop thinking about his sin which “...continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence [which] was the anguish in his inmost soul” (133).
Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both have secrets that make them look and act differently, their secrets affect their character and how they do their job. Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl but he doesn 't want to face the same humiliation as Hester did for his sins. Because of his secret he self punishes and fasts, he also preaches better than he did before although his health is failing. Chillingworth’s secret is that he was the husband of Hester while he was away, before she cheated on him. Chillingworth gets uglier and uglier driven by the need to get revenge on Pearl’s father.
How does wearing an A for the rest of your life because of a sin sound? Not only can it be traumatizing and cause effects of guilt and sin. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are many characters that experience effects of guilt and sin, but mostly Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale are the ones that experience it the worst. Not only is there internal guilt, but the effects can also take a toll on the overall appearance of someone. Throughout "The Scarlet Letter," there are many obvious effects of sin and guilt throughout the book, where if might affect a person in a bad way.
The Hidden Sin and The Revealed Sin As humans, we live in the that are brimming with sins and evil desire. As the creator of all the creatures, God, sent his only son to save the people from the control of devil. The only thing we have to do is to acknowledge our mistake. Bible teach us that we should tell the truth to God and your neighbors, and God will forgive you. But people are worse, they not only hide the sin and their evil behaviors but also try to deny it.