Who Is Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale In The Scarlet Letter

In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, both Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. However, one suffered more than the other did because the punishments were different. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale suffered more than Hester because, unlike Hester, he had nothing to live for and because of the guilt he had to keep hidden.Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale suffered greatly through his conscience and had nothing to ease it. Dimmesdale had nothing to live for because he didn’t have a family or someone that needed him. Dimmesdale, despairing of life, told Chillingworth that “[he] could be well content, that [his] labors, and [his] sorrows, and [his] sins, and [his] pains, should shortly end with [him], and what is earthly of them be buried in [his] grave”(83).

He had to deal with suffering and guilt alone.Dimmesdale, without the advice or help from anyone, tried to find a form of justice in a way so he began to physically torture himself. To do this “oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied [a bloody scrooge] on his own shoulders …, it was his custom to fast …rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him …, he kept vigils …viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it”(99). Dimmesdale did these horrible acts because of a feeling of nothingness. He felt that he deserved even more punishment because of the extra sin of concealing his original sin.He felt that he had to pay for what he did.. Hester, at least, did feel needed or loved by Pearl, which kept her from many other terrible sins, and she did not have the extra tormenting sin to carry, which shows that she suffered

The crime was his life because it seemed everything revolved around it. The only truth, “that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth, was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it in his aspect”(100). This sin and his suffering had taken over his life; he had nothing else. Hester had one “treasure”, Pearl, while Dimmesdale had none, leaving him alone in the world,and no one to help him deal with his pain.

 Dimmesdale had a terrible, undying guilt, which followed him everywhere and never left him. Dimmesdale’s feelings were clearin that he explained that “it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart”(93). Dimmesdale said that once the extra sin of concealing the original sin is gone the load on the conscience lessens relieving the guilt and suffering. Hester did not have these additional burdens of guilt and suffering as Dimmesdale