When we keep secrets we also keep guilt and guilt will destroy us from the inside. In the book of scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and how one woman who committed adultery with a character named dimmesdale who is the town revered. Dimmesdale kept secrets to maintaining his reputation but actions the guilt eats him from the inside. Dimmesdale the town revered for the puritan religion. He commits adultery with Hester and has a child, but instead of facing his sin he keeps inside for no one to know. He keeps the secrets for his reputation so no one thinks badly about him. He does for the reason of him being the revered so many people look up to him he has this high power with so much respect and then he commits adultery. He says nothing about so he won 't disappoint anyone. He doesn 't want anyone to think that he is this evil person just because he committed adultery. "Had I one friend, or were it my worst …show more content…
“Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself. He had been driven higher by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere” (Hawthorne 138) here dimmesdale can 't face the justice of what he has done wrong which is why the author called him a coward and is the reason why he kept his secrets because he is a coward to admit it to and face the consequences which is why later the guilt of keeping them eats him from the inside. Dimmesdale also kept his secrets to keep his reputation as the revered so the town won 't judge him. If the people would have found out of what he has done then they would have punished him and possibly execute him. There also the reason of how the people look up to him for advice because he is the revered. He told the town he committed adultery it would also affect his roll of the revered it could make the people perspective on be very bad because of who
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Show More“What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him— yea, compel him, as it were — to add hypocrisy to sin?” After the different approaches Dimmesdale brought forward to the community, she is being asked to reveal his name by asking what does she get from adding on to the sin. How does her hiding the name save him, from a sin he has already done? He tried in every way to get it out of her. He asks why was it okay for her lover to perform the adultery, do the sin, but then suddenly not okay for him to take on the punishment with her in front of the community.
For seven years, Dimmesdale pretends he is innocent of adultery and gets praises for his faux act. Dimmesdale even says so himself that he feels extremely guilty and would rather share his crime than to keep it in secret. He obviously does not prefer sharing his crime with the public because he waits seven long years to do so. He was too obsessed with what others think and gossip about him.
Dimmesdale should have come clean right at the start but he instead he covered it up and this opens a door for people to use it against you if they find out. This happens in to Dimmesdale when Chillingworth who at the time was Hester’s ex-husband and Dimmesdale’s doctor, he finds out that his suspicions were right about Dimmesdale being the person that was involved in the affair with Hester when he finds the letter A written on his chest. This opens a door for
First, Dimmesdale’s sin getting revealed was foreshadowed and it sounded as if it had to be revealed in a certain way. While Dimmesdale was with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold, Pearl asked if he would stand with them the next day. To this he said, “Nay, not so, my little Pearl, not so my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow” (Hawthorne 99). If Dimmesdale was not worried about what the public would think once he revealed his sin, then he would have just stood their the next day and revealed it then.
Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister, a clergyman had committed the horrid sin of adultery, the same sin as Hester. Dimmesdale’s holy affiliation gave him a kind and pure disposition and this was solidified by his dimwittedness, making him seem almost childlike. By having a character with these qualities, Hawthorne contradicts the stereotype he has set up by having Dimmesdale be “unworth... [y] to [complete his] humblest mission” (71), a quality virtually unheard of among ministers. The author then has Dimmesdale confess his “sin so awfully revealed!”(211) in order for both Hester and Dimmesdale to redeem themselves of sin and restore the goodness.
Both characters affect others and their own lives good and bad because of the secrets they keep. Dimmesdale is a reverend for the church, he has good intentions but
As the moving of story, the “side effect” of the hidden sin has reveal. Dimmesdale become more sick and powerless. As the end of the story, Dimmesdale concede the sin and died as the winner of the fight with hidden sin. Dimmesdale as a combination of saint and sinner, his sin is not committed adultery, but it is that he cannot face the sin and admit it. He wanted to be all perfect in the eyes of the masses, but destroyed his perfectly in the eyes of God.
The Consequences of Sin Sin is defined as “an offense against religious or moral law”. The idea of sin and being ostracized for your sins was extremely relevant during the Puritan period when religion was the greatest component of daily life. The Puritans believed that they had entered a covenant with God and therefore any sin, such as crime and adultery were considered a breach of their covenant with God. This view led to the church punishing people who committed sin in order for God not to punish the church as a whole. The consequences and effects of sin is shown through the character development in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter.
Mentally, his guilt strains his mind, which causes his physical deterioration, and the weakening of his body. As Dimmesdale finally admits his sin to the townspeople, his guilt is lifted, and he is able to release himself from his captivity. Though he deteriorated both mind and body from his guilt, by telling the townspeople of his sin, it was as if “a spell was broken” (238). He no longer needed to force himself to hide his sin, which was what was hurting him. By finally dealing with his sin in a similar way to Hester, Dimmesdale was able to free himself of his self-imposed captivity and
The Scarlet Letter Essay Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale were two of the main sinners in The Scarlet Letter. Both characters kept their sins secrete throughout the story. These sins included adultery, revenge, and even murder. Out of the two sinners, Chillingworth was the worst, because he never felt guilt for the terrible things he was doing. Dimmesdale spent his entire life in guilt and remorse for the sins he had committed (“Who”).
Because of the effects that Dimmesdale’s sin had on those living in his society, his sin is the greatest of all those presented in the novel, as illustrated by Hawthorne through Dimmesdale’s interactions with others. Because, unlike Hester, Dimmesdale hides his sin from the
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).
The book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a complex novel that has underlying themes of sin and the responsibility for sin. The novel takes place in a Puritanical society, but two people, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, fornicate with each other, even though Hester is married to someone else. Only Hester is punished, so Dimmesdale keeps his guilt inside, not revealing it to anyone. Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, then proceeds to ruin Hester’s partner in crime, corrupting his soul and being the ultimate cause for his death. Hester, on the other hand, leads a relatively happy life after she had repented for her sin.
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 had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in great part by his sorrows. (Hawthorne 128) The guilt of his sin has eaten him alive, so much that his visage and demeanor are almost cadaverous. Dimmesdale does not confess his sin until the end of the novel because he does not want to disappoint his congregation.