Who Is Dimmesdale's Decay In The Scarlet Letter

One moral consequence of sin is guilt. In Dimmesdale's case his sin was a great one. He had committed adultery with a married women, Hester. Hester received her punishment, but Dimmesdale goes unpunished, causing him to be ridden with guilt. Guilt was the culprit of all of Dimmesdale’s suffering. Guilt lead Dimmesdale to whip himself, starve himself, and possibly carve the scarlet letter into himself. His health depletes rapidly after Hester is publically shamed but he is allowed to continue his normal daily life. This creates unrest in Dimmesdale, he feels that he also deserves a punishment. Therefore, one night, Dimmesdale in his state of omnipresent guilt, goes to the scaffold, the one that Hester was publicly shamed on. While traveling

“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy,” (KJV 28:13). The message of this short proverb is simple: confess. Despite this, there are millions refusing to reveal their hidden atrocities to the oblivious public. But you don’t need public ridicule for a sin to destroy you, in fact, it would be better if you did confess. This is the ideology of Nathaniel Hawthorne author of The Scarlet Letter. In this book, Hawthorne details an elaborate story showing the consequences of confessing sins in contrast to concealing it. A sin weighing down on you and destroying you from the inside out is a moral consequence and, the only remedy is confessing the sin. This notion can be seen in the difference between Hester and Dimmesdale with how they handled the scarlet letter and the effects of that.

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.

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.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne takes place in a Puritan community of Boston during the 17th century, during which Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne commit the grave sin of adultery. Although the young woman, Hester Prynne, was accused and discovered guilty of this sin, she refused to give up the name of her partner in sin throughout her public punishment at the scaffold. Furthermore, when the young minister, Dimmesdale, was asked to question Hester, he did not push her to reveal his name due to fear for himself. However, the concealment of his identity drove Dimmesdale to more guilt, leading him to believe it would have been better if everyone had known. Thus, Dimmesdale began a series of self-penances, including a secret confession at the scaffold during the night. These self-penances failed to relieve Dimmesdale of his overwhelming guilt, consequently leading Dimmesdale to make a final public confession at the scaffold. Over the course of the three scaffold scenes, Dimmesdale changes from cowardly guilt and

Dimmesdale and Hester suffers because of the sin they did. Dimmesdale feels guilt even though he never confesses that he is the farther. He would go to the scaffold at night and stand there screaming trying to get the people to come outside to see him but it was just all in his head when she would stand on the scaffold during the day with the red A on her chest she felt guilt even though she would not tell anyone who the farther is and for having an affair while her husband was missing for years. For example, Dimmesdale does not want to confess about his sin because he does not want to face the consequences. This is illustrated when Dimmesdale says, “then and there before the judgment-seat, thy mother and thou, and I must stand together” (Dimmesdale 139). Dimmesdale does

A narcissistic personality often causes turmoil, with the ever-present black hole of self-importance potentially manifesting into an abusive relationship. In The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a narcissistic personality is seen in the character of Dimmesdale, the reverend in the Puritan town of 17th century Boston, and secret lover of Hester Prynne. Hester, having given birth to a child out of wedlock, is forced to wear the letter “A” on her chest as punishment for her adultery. She is ceaselessly insulted and ostracized by the other Puritans for the rest of her time in the town. Meanwhile, Hester refuses to reveal who her lover is and thus, Dimmesdale is able to maintain his facade of a pure and holy reverend.

Hester and Dimmesdale have a very unique love for eachother. Their love is reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet in the way that they are not able to pursue it. They are people who have been hardened and hurt by their past mistakes. They share that connection with each other unlike anyone else. Hester and Pearl go to meet up with Dimmesdale in the forest in complete effort to keep their relationship a complete secret. While discussing Dimmesdale’s faite, Hester feels that “the sacrifice of the clergyman’s good name, and death itself, ...would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon” (Hawthorne, 149) meaning that she does not want him to suffer the same public shame that she did if he were to reveal their affair.

Guilt Obsession Within the novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathanial Hawthorne Reverend Dimmesdale drastically develops throughout the novel, from being a symbol of Puritan religion to displeasing the population of the Puritan expectations through his actions. His appearance as well as his privilege and prominence within the community alters radically. He begins the novel as the town reverend, and later, the shame of Hester accepting the entirety of the blame and the fact that he escaped with no punishment or shame from the town ultimately consumed him. Throughout the novel, it was revealed that he had a red mark on his chest in correlation to the “A” that was displayed on Hester’s chest.

In the Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne was a character of high integrity. She lived by her own values and merits no matter what the consequence, and refused to give in to the abundance of temptations that were presented to her. The scarlet letter also provided lessons that Hester needed to learn in order to continue her development as a person. Men living by Dimmesdale’s standard, hiding the fact they have sinned and having to be pushed to the edge to confess, feel integrity takes a back seat to getting what you yearn for. For them, their moral code is only a guide, seldom

Throughout the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne keeps his main focus on the character’s development and how they change/grow throughout the novel. Reverend Dimmesdale was a crucial character all throughout this novel. Dimmesdale, among other characters, showed much change, referring to the way he began to react towards other citizens, and growth, referring to his outcome at the end of the novel. There was abundant self-hate, irony, and guilt within Dimmesdale. Reverend Dimmesdale was a leader of the community, but also a sinner. He put on a different face for the citizens because he was a leader, but in reality he should have not been a leader.

Hester changed her attire to a plain, darkshade, with no designs, which corresponded to her emotions. There was nothing she could accomplish to reduce the pain of the guilt since the truth was known by everyone in her hometown. As time went on, Hester regained some purport in her town. The townspeople demanded Hester for her skills and soon she did not need to wear the scarlet letter anymore, but she thought she deserved it. Whether the sin was committed in secrecy or not, both Hester and Dimmesdale went through similar consequences.

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne pinpoints various effects of sin on individuals within a strict, Puritan society. To shed a negative light on Puritan attitudes toward sin and lack of forgiveness, Hawthorne paints vivid pictures of freedom and imprisonment, relief and regret, through the juxtaposition of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, and the characterization of the two lovers. Hester undergoes major character growth through her years bearing the scarlet “A,” "so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom," introduced in the narrator’s shifting viewpoint of the young mother. The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale on the other hand, shoulders his guilt, in spite of the physical manifestation of his inner turmoil in his

In order to reveal Dimmesdale's sorrowful nature. Hawthorne describes the different actions the poor minister takes in order to attempt to atone for his sins such as “[fasting]” and his use of a “bloody scourge” he genuinely believed that this would help to purify himself of his sins and to relieve the burden that he was forced to bear upon his shoulders, however his attempts to atone ultimately lead to even more torment. Hawthorne discloses this by describing Dimmesdale’s visions of the “herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister” this further reveals the utter anguish that he is going through another example of this is the vision of his mother “turning her face away as she passed by” the emotional

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores recurring themes of suffering surrounding the main characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester and Dimmesdale both commit adultery with each other, and, as a result of this, both experience gruesome and occasionally unbearable forms of suffering. Though they undergo different forms of pain, both of their experiences are highly reliant on how the Puritan society treats them. Hester 's pain stems from the shame and estrangement she receives from the community, while Dimmesdale’s is due to the reverence with which the community regards him. Although, in spite of the fact that both Hester and Dimmesdale receive harsh penalty for their sin, by the end of the book, Hawthorne shows how their suffering is, in fact, the key to their salvation.