The Unknown Shame Of Arthur Dimmesdale In The Scarlett Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Unknown Shame Arthur Dimmesdale is the towns pastor. In everyone else’s eyes he was an angel, a smart young innocent angel.
“Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest – land.”
(Hawthorne, 62)
Although Arthur is innocent in the eyes of the townspeople, he knows he has done himself and the town wrong. He has committed a crime that could punish him as far as putting him to death. He lives day by day with the thoughts of innocence but with a feeling of guilt much rather mixed emotions. He observes others being punished for what he has done as well or was an accomplice with. Dimmesdale is Hester’s partner in crime, she committed adultery and was caught because she ended up pregnant. In the meanwhile, Dimmesdale was the cause of all this he was the accomplice and the father of the child. On the day of Hester’s hearing, the day on the scaffold, Hester refused to tell the name of the man who was involved, and Dimmesdale knowing it was himself wanted everyone to know

Dimmesdale remembered all th pain and embarrassment Hester had felt on the scaffold where she was punished for the sin she had committed. He goes to the scaffold and lets the guilt build up.
“And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his breast, right over his heart. ”

Not just the guilt of himself and what he had done, but of what Hester had gone through and kept his secret all along. As he is on the scaffold he builds up all his stress and decides to let it out with a big