Scarlet Letter Guilt

Every day throughout the world, everyone makes mistakes and sins. However, when people sin, they react differently to the situation and to the sins’ consequences (plural possession). Some would prefer to confess their sins and live with the effects of others being aware of them; in doing so, they free themselves from the burden of guilt. Others would rather hide the sins and suffer the guilt by themselves. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows these two opposing reactions to sin as well as their respective consequences through the fates of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester’s sin is publicly declared at the scaffold, and she is forced to forever wear a scarlet letter as a reminder of the wrongful act she committed. However,

He secretly suffers the immense guilt of having sinned but not confessed, especially because Dimmesdale is seen as one of the most revered ministers in the town. Living with the knowledge that he committed a dreadful crime, Dimmesdale must live with the guilt daily. At midnight on the scaffold, he tells Hester that she should reveal their act of adultery so that he does carry the burden of hiding is wrongdoing: “Yet better were it so [to confess the sin], than to hide a guilty heart through life” (Hawthorne 56). Since Dimmesdale does not want to live with the guilt of the sin for the rest of his life yet is too weak to confess it himself, he tells Hester to reveal it. She does not reveal the adultery, and he is left to bear the guilt personally. As a result of this, he is now deteriorating mentally and physically because of the severe shame he feels about committing the wrongdoing. Mentally, Dimmesdale declines because he can only focus on the guilt he feels every day. Since he cannot repent fully until he reveals his sin to the public, he constantly struggles internally with whether or not to tell his congregation about his sinful deed. In addition to being mentally weakened, he grows weaker physically as time passes because his guilt is manifesting itself on his body. Furthermore, Dimmesdale beats himself with a whip to “purify [his] body and render it” so that he can punish himself and relieve himself of the gut-wrenching guilt he had endured since the adultery took place (Hawthorne 115). He feels a strong sense of responsibility for his sin so intensely that he envies Hester for publicly acknowledging her sin: “Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after