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Morality in the scarlet letter
Critique on Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moments of dimmesdale being the devil in the scarlet letter
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The Scarlet Letter: Dimmesdale the Wuss
"But (Hester) is not the protagonist; the chief actor, and the tragedy of The Scarlet Letter is not her tragedy, but Dimmesdales. He it was whom the sorrows of death encompassed_. His public confession is one of the noblest climaxes of tragic literature."
This statement by Randall Stewart does not contain the same ideas that I believe were contained within The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I, on the contrary to Stewart's statement, think Dimmesdale is a coward and a hypocrite. Worse, he is a self-confessed coward and hypocrite. He knows what he has to do to still the voice of his conscience and make his peace with God. Throughout the entire story his confession remains an obstacle . While Hester is a relatively constant character, Dimmesdale is incredibly dynamic. From his fall with Hester, he moves, in steps, toward his public hint, at the end of the novel, of sinning. He wants to unburden himself by revealing his sin to his congregation, but somehow can never quite manage this. He is a typical example of a "wuss", using today’s terminology.
To some extent, Dimmesdale's story is one of a single man tempted into the depths of the hormonal world. This world, however, is a place where the society treats sexuality with ill grace. But Dimmesdale’s problem is enormously complicated by the fact of Hester's marriage (for him no technicality), and by his own image of himself as a cleric devoted to higher things. Unlike other young men, Dimmesdale cannot accept his loss of innocence and go on from there. He must struggle futilely to get back to where he was. Torn between the desire to confess and atone for his sin and the cowardice that holds him back, Dimmesdale goes slightly mad. He takes up some morbid forms of penance, fasts and scourgings, but he can neither whip nor starve the sin from his soul. In his agony, he staggers to the pulpit to confess, but his words come out as generalized and meaningless declarations of guilt. The reverend seems to want to reveal himself, but Chillingworth's influence and his own shame are stronger than his weak conscience. Dimmesdale cannot surrender an identity which brings him the love and admiration of his parishioners. He is far too intent on his earthly image to willingly reveal his sin.
...espite of what they thought. Dimmesdale confession would prove him to be a man of humbleness and honesty, a man who ratifies his errors of the past and completes his duty as a minister, father, husband, and son of God. Moreover, Dimmesdale has the ability to set himself free from Chillingworth’s bondage instead of bearing more of Chillingworth’s psychological torture. The temptations the minister faced would give him the strength to overcome his fears and to become a devoted man.
Before Dimmesdale’s untimely death in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale committed the sins of adultery and lying. In order to keep his sins a secret, Dimmesdale spoke nothing of his involvement in the affair until it tore him apart from the inside out.When Dimmesdale tried to confess his sin to his congregation, they saw the confession as if it were part of his sermon. “He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood”. (Hawthorne 171) Instead of correcting their assumption, Dimmesdale went along with it, once more hiding his sinfulness. When Dimmesdale finally confessed his sin openly...
Instead of humbling himself in front of everyone in the beginning, he chooses his pride and his position of power over God’s merciful grace. In conclusion, with these arguments, it is indisputable that Dimmesdale experiences more guilt than any other character. He attempts every possible way to circumvent the inevitable.
To the town, Dimmesdale appears to be perfectly righteous and is respected highly; while in reality, he is just as guilty as Hester. The hypocrisy of his character first begins to develop as he denies his own sinfulness
... him feeble. In the end, he frees himself from his guilt by admitting to everyone his sin. He crumbles under the anxiety of holding his secret inwards revealing Dimmesdale to be a rather weak male protagonist. He also is not strong enough support Hester, to show love towards Hester, or to take his own burden of sin on himself, although he does realize how wrong he is. His inability to outwardly show his sin like Hester proves Hester to be the stronger one which supports the idea that Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a feminist composition.
Dimmesdale, a Puritan minister, has had an affair (which he chose to do) with Chillingworth’s wife and he can’t come to the point where he can confess his sin to the public. Therefore, he is a secret sinner. By being this secret sinner Dimmesdale begins to physically and mentally break down. He begins to emotionally and physically beat himself up, “he whipped himself, starved himself as an act of penance until his knees trembled beneath him, and stayed up all night having long vigils and sometimes having visions” (Hawthorne 96). Dimmesdale’s sin has caught up with him and it is affecting his present along with his future; his secret sin is eating him up. He is beating himself up because he has kept it locked inside of him when he should have openness about his sin. Hester has openness about the sin they committed together, and it is not eating her up like it is eating up Dimmesdale. Not only has Dimmesdale been beating himself up, literally, over hi...
The virtue of truth and the evil of secret sin are clearly illustrated in the novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The three main characters in this novel display their own honesty and sins.
Wilbur and Orville Wright spent their lives building and working with mechanical devices. They began with little toys as children and then grew up and began working with bicycles. These works lead them towards their work with airplanes. The Wright Brothers tried for many years to build a successful flying machine and succeeded. The Wright Brothers laid the foundation for aviation when they made history by being the first to create a successful flying machine.
Being the pastor of the town Dimmesdale was a revered man. He held the responsibility to lead the town’s people spiritually. Although he tried to live a double life of being a pastor and a man who is trying to keep his greatest sin a secret. He cannot come to terms to confessing his sin even if his guilt i...
The evidence shows that because of the Wright brothers' methods of testing, and their focus on developing lift and control, they were able to beat the crowd of enthusiastic aviation experimenters in the race for flight. Wilbur and Orville Wright were two men who worked very hard in understanding and putting to work the principles of flight in building a successful and practical aircraft. All their hard work paid off when, on that historic day in 1903, they finally made the first powered flight. The Wright brothers' invention has changed the world, and they will always be remembered as the two men who flew first.
In choosing to contain his deep sin as a secret, Mr. Dimmesdale suffered from a festering guilt that plagued him until his death. After Hester was sentenced with the punishment for her act of adultery, Mr. Dimmesdale remained silent in refusal to confess to his inclusion in the sin. Over time, feelings of remorse gnawed at Mr. Dimmesdale’s conscience and left him in a self loathing state for his own hypocrisy. Dimmesdale felt excessive guilt in allowing Hester to undergo the entirety of the ridicule and punishment alone while he maintained a positioned of respected and idolized authority, yet could not find it in his heart to expose the sin. Looking upon his situation with the Puritan perspective, Mr. Dimmesdale “…loved the truth and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore above all things else, he loathed his miserable self” (136). Mr. Dimmesdale felt he was living a lie for he, the very man who preached to the community about living a pure life, was living one tainted with...
Halloween costumes usually spark controversy in many societal aspects, and the trend is constantly facing diversification. Racial and other forms of discrimination continue to affect targeted members of the society in positive and negative ways. Affected races and the mentally ill are typical targets in the matter, and their plight needs consideration. People should avoid spotting offensive costumes in order to remain ethical in the society. Ethical concerns are the largest contributors in the issue, and they need ultimate involvement.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once said, “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.” This quote truly captures Dimmesdale’s death and journey to death, it is guilt that drives him to the grave and it accompanies him throughout all five grieving stages. Dimmesdale is one of many characters in The Scarlet Letter that is faced with problems both personally and spiritually. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a romantic novel about a young woman, Hester Prynne, who is permanently marked with her sin by a scarlet A she must bare on her chest and also by her daughter Pearl. Hester committed adultery with the young minister of Boston, Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester, and her beloved child Pearl, learn to over come the A and change the meaning of it from adulterer to able, while they are changing the way society views them, Dimmesdale is withering away under the “care” of Rodger Chillingworth, Hester’s past husband. Chillingworth knows about the sin and seeks revenge on Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale is helpless and in a downward spiral. He let the sin become who he is, even though the towns people don’t know of his adultery until his dying breath. The Scarlet Letter is a story about overcoming the darkness that hangs above you and stepping out of the sin or gloom that controls you. For characters like Hester this is a fairly easy thing to handle, but on the flip side characters like Dimmesdale struggle and can not seem to escape their heinous acts and don’t find peace of mind until they die. The Scarlet Letter mainly focuses on the process of overcoming these troubling times and how each individual character handles the pressure, stress, and guilt that come along with it differently. Arthur Dimmesdale is a lost soul after his sin, he expe...
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Both Hester and Dimmesdale, are characters in the Scarlet Letter. They suffer with the guilt of the sin of adultery that they committed. At the time, the Puritans looked down on this type of sin. Hester and Dimmesdale can be compared and contrast in the way they handled their scarlet letter, their cowardliness, and their belief of what the afterlife is.