Chillingworth and Dimmesdale: Reflections of True Puritan Society 18th century’s perception of the Puritan Society was that Puritans were a zealous community of people that lived with strict moral standards which allowed them to live in perfect harmony. However, the truth is Puritans were overly zealous whose values created paranoia and intolerance for other views. Through the characters Dimmesdale and Chillingworth who are also falsely perceived, Hawthorne suggest they are representative of the dour living of Puritan society that is hidden by the puritan’s tranquil and utopian outlook. John Winthrop aimed to created Christian utopian society when he founded the puritan community, he failed in this goal. Even with his failure, people still thought of the society as pure and just. What he engendered instead was a community whose theology denied human being’s free will, filled with paranoia, racism, sexism and hatred of sexuality and youth. These themes are clearly represented in the Scarlet Letter. The hatred of youth is shown early on in the novel, when Hester Prynne first enters from the prison, “This woman [Hester Prynne] has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the statue-book.”(199). The aged ugly woman who makes this statement is used by Hawthorne to serve as representative for the puritans, while Hester represents youth and sexuality. The undeserving punishment of death for the crime of adultery only further demonstrates the extremities of this so-called perfect society. While perhaps seen as God’s will that a person who commits adultery must die, it is instead the government’s way of controlling the people by fear and terror so that t... ... middle of paper ... ...ore it would be released free, which he then delivered the greatest sermon yet. The puritans economic status increased as less and less free will was granted, basically proving along with Dimmesdale, as corruption increases in religious figures or people they gradually better themselves, Dimmesdale in his sermons, while the Puritans in their economic status. Through the characters Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, Hawthorne reveals the true nature of Puritan society through parallels among the three. All three’s hidden evil is masked by each of their perfect appearances. Chillingworth exhibited the Puritan’s benefit of the doubt they received because of their relation to religion, while Dimmesdale presented the fact that corruption fuels the association with religion and as corruption within someone or something increases, so does a person or people’s betterment.
Life is unpredictable, and through trial and error humanity learns how to respond to conflicts and learns how to benefit from mistakes. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a character who changes and gains knowledge from the trials he faces, but first he has to go through physical, spiritual, and emotional agony. In the midst of all the havoc, the young theologian is contaminated with evil but fortunately his character develops from fragile to powerful, and the transformation Dimmesdale undergoes contributes to the plot’s climax.
1. What is the difference between a. and a. The sins that Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth committed had consequences on their lives. Hester’s sin, adultery, caused her to be outcast in the Puritan community and caused her to live constantly in persecution of others in her village as seen in the quote “.little Puritans. got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashion, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not infrequently reviled them with their tongues” (Page 141, Hawthorn). Dimmesdale's sin, adultery, affected his ability to lift his life by causing him to be constantly ill as seen in the quote “It be the Soul’s disease”
"Life is hard, but accepting that fact makes it easier." This common phrase clearly states a harsh fact that Rev. Dimmesdale, a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, had to face. In this story of deception and adultery set in the Puritan era, Hawthorne introduces Dimmesdale as a weak and cowardly man who refuses to take responsibility for his actions. The Rev. Dimmesdale is a transitional character in that he is, at the beginning of the novel, outwardly good but inwardly deceitful and by the end of the novel he becomes both outwardly and inwardly truthful.
First of all, Hawthorne parallels the hypocrisy of Dimmesdale to that of Puritan society. Hawthorne describes Dimmesdale as, "a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners," even though Dimmesdale is seen as the most holy man in the Puritan community. Puritan society was supposed to be a utopian society and do away with their English traditions. Similarly, as Dimmesdale was supposed to be holy, yet they both were hypocritical. Secondly, Dimmesdale portrays the Puritan society by not initially taking his place on the scaffold, "Ye have both been here before, but I was not with you… and we will stand all three together." The Puritans modeled Dimmesdale's hypocrisy, as they were supposed to be a "city on a hill" for the world to see while they ended up mixing up English tradition with their ideals. While Dimmesdale hid his sin at the first scaffold seen, so did the Puritans when they colonized America. The Puritans faults were not initially that obvious but as time grew on they appeared on their scaffold just as Dimmesdale does. Hawthorne writes about one of Dimmesdale's sermons that is, "addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches." In Dimmesdale's sermons, he spoke out against sin while at the same time he commits this sin, just as the Puritans committed sins that they condemned Dimmesdale's character models Puritan society in the way they treat religious persecution. The Puritans left England to flee from religious intolerance, but when they got to the colonies, they had no religious tolerance for people with different religious beliefs. Dimmesdale speaks out against adultery and commits it, the Puritans demand religious tolerance but refuse to give it.
In the literary classic, The Scarlet Letter, readers follow the story of a Puritan New England colony and the characteristics of that time period. Readers begin to grasp concepts such as repentance and dealing with sin through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s indirect descriptions of these detailed and complex characters by their actions and reactions. The character Roger Chillingworth symbolizes sin itself and deals with internal conflict throughout the course of the story. The narrator describes Chillingworth in a critical attitude to reveal to the reader the significance of repentance and revenge by the use of many literary techniques such as
Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of his society
The Scarlet letter wrote by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This story has 3 main characters name Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth they are related each other, they are many stories happened and in the third scaffold scene, the woman loses her dream, her husband loses his victim, the young man regains his soul
Hypocrisy is an immense apprehension in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. One of the main characters, Arthur Dimmesdale, who is a highly respected priest, preaches all day about sin and is seen as a holy person, but he commits a sin that is rooted in the town of Boston for seven years. This sin is the cause of much anguish for all of the main characters in the novel which makes Dimmesdale an important source of hypocrisy. Hawthorne uses Dimmesdale, a highly respected religious official, as a source of hypocrisy to show that followers of the Puritan religion will idolize their leader without knowing their leader’s true background.
Dimmesdale expresses his internal reflection onto Pearl, his internal opposition as a child of nature. While Pearl looks beyond her father as an external opposition and expresses her external reflection onto Dimmesdale a man of society, making the oppositions neutralize. Whereas their reflections shift to mirror the light onto the dimensions of their relationship, making the reflections merge into one image. Thus both their oppositions combined with their reflections break the bastilles of society and nature that isolated Pearl from her father, coalescing the attributes that differentiated them. Hawthorne uses reflections and oppositions of the physical and mental attributes of his character’s to light the dimensions hidden by the shadows of the Puritan
During the 1600s, Puritans had colonized Massachusetts Bay, and they had created a theocratic government in order to establish order. Nathaniel Hawthorne has written the book The Scarlet Letter in order to demonstrate and critique Puritan society. Hawthorne has emphasized on the sin of adultery and has given a brief description of Hester’s struggle in the Puritan society. Particularly, he focused on the consequences of sins by using Dimmesdale as a medium. Dimmesdale, the tragic hero of The Scarlet Letter, encounters a series of events, which increases his guilt, and later on he dies after living a life of pain. Hawthorne characterizes Dimmesdale as a negative, unrighteous, and gulity man in order to demonstrate his downfall.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mr. Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is that the townspeople will find out about his sin of adultery with Hester Prynne. Mr. Dimmesdale fears that his soul could not take the shame of such a disclosure, as he is an important moral figure in society. However, in not confessing his sin to the public, he suffers through the guilt of his sin, a pain which is exacerbated by the tortures of Roger Chillingworth. Though he consistently chooses guilt over shame, Mr. Dimmesdale goes through a much more painful experience than Hester, who endured the public shame of the scarlet letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s guilt is much more damaging to his soul than any shame that he might have endured.
Initially, when Chillingworth arrives in the Puritan community, Dimmesdale seems to decline physically, causing the mysterious doctor to care for him. According to the narrator, “the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study” (Hawthorne 82). Essentially, Dimmesdale’s secret guilt consumes him physically as he takes part in many fasts and vigils. His paleness is due to studious pastoral habits as he wishes to prevent his sin from forbidding a future life in heaven. Dimmesdale’s perpetual desire to purify himself deteriorates his physical condition. By portraying Dimmesdale’s cheeks as pale, Hawthorne shows how secret guilt can ravage one’s physical appearance. Another instance of physical deterioration due to guilt occurs after Dimmesdale delivers the election sermon. The narrator proclaims, “How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph...The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a death-like hue” (Hawthorne 171). The narrator describes the weak and sickly nature of Dimmesdale as his inspiration and energy vanish.
For an attempt to purify a religious community of sin, the Puritans in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, have numerous faults due to their blindness of their own hypocrisy. Starting at the beginning of the text, women begin gossiping about Hester. The women talk about how Hester will cover her letter, how they wouldn’t take mercy on her as the magistrates have and how Reverend Dimmesdale,”her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation” (Hawthorne 53). So because they also enjoy elaborate things, the children and virgin women do very un-Puritan like things, and how Dimmesdale himself is a hypocrite all show hypocrisy within the Puritan Society; however, children learn by how their parents act and what they do, so the Puritans within the text are following their
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the reader is able to observe how one sin devastates three lives. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth are all guilty of succumbing to temptation, anger, and desire, causing all to fit the definition of a sinner. Yet, Chillingworth's iniquities raise him up above Hester and Dimmesdale on the level of diabolic acts.
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...