Sin has been present since the beginning of time and will forever remain. As each era has passed, people have had different views on how sin should be recognized and punished. In the Puritan times, sin was usually punishable by death. Therefore, some sins were purposefully hidden. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale becomes a victim to his own concealed sin. Dimmesdale is a partner in adultery with Hester Prynne, the wearer of the scarlet letter. He is living a lie, and it is tearing his guilty soul apart. Another character with secrets and sins of his own is Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth’s hidden sin is revenge, and it captures his whole purpose in life. It is obvious that both of these men have secret sins, but how do these hidden transgressions affect their lives? While Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth are both sinful, they are each affected differently by their sins -physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Dimmesdale is living a lie, but he constantly feels guilty over his sin. In fact, he feels so contrite over his sin that he is physically damaged. He tortures himself with a whip, keeps long vigils of wakefulness at night, and starves himself until his knees are trembling. Because of the stress he his continually putting on his body, he becomes physically ill. Another way his iniquity affects him physically is the habit of placing his hand over his heart in pain, the same place where the scarlet letter is on Hester Prynne. Emotionally, as the years pass by, he begins to hate himself and consider himself to be the worst sinner of all civilization; as he said himself, “behold me here, the one sinner of the world.” His constant focus on his sin drives himself t...
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...aged to try and find Hester’s partner and torture this man’s emotions for revenge. Their sin becomes the only thing these men think about, consuming them to the point that nothing else is important, and eventually takes their lives. For Dimmesdale, his guilty conscience and self-abuse are the causes of his untimely death. For Chillingworth, his obsessive revenge becomes permanently engraved into his being and when the cause for his vengeance dies he dies soon afterward. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are both wretched sinners with transgressions that have different effects - physically, emotionally, and mentally. It is obvious that both men are affected drastically by their wrongdoings and in the end pay with their lives.
Work Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter." Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales. Ed. James McIntosh. New York: Norton, 2007.
In the book The Scarlet Letter, the character Reverend Dimmesdale, a very religious man, committed adultery, which was a sin in the Puritan community. Of course, this sin could not be committed alone. His partner was Hester Prynne. Hester was caught with the sinning only because she had a child named Pearl. Dimmesdale was broken down by Roger Chillinsworth, Hester Prynne’s real husband, and by his own self-guilt. Dimmesdale would later confess his sin and die on the scaffold. Dimmesdale was well known by the community and was looked up to by many religious people. But underneath his religious mask he is actually the worst sinner of them all. His sin was one of the greatest sins in a Puritan community. The sin would eat him alive from the inside out causing him to become weaker and weaker, until he could not stand it anymore. In a last show of strength he announces his sin to the world, but dies soon afterwards. In the beginning Dimmesdale is a weak, reserved man. Because of his sin his health regresses more and more as the book goes on, yet he tries to hide his sin beneath a religious mask. By the end of the book he comes forth and tells the truth, but because he had hidden the sin for so long he is unable to survive. Dimmesdale also adds suspense to the novel to keep the reader more interested in what Reverend Dimmesdale is hiding and his hidden secrets. Therefore Dimmesdale’s sin is the key focus of the book to keep the reader interested. Dimmesdale tries to cover up his sin by preaching to the town and becoming more committed to his preachings, but this only makes him feel guiltier. In the beginning of the story, Dimmesdale is described by these words; “His eloquence and religious fervor had already given earnest of high eminence in his profession.”(Hawthorne,44). This proves that the people of the town looked up to him because he acted very religious and he was the last person that anyone expected to sin. This is the reason that it was so hard for him to come out and tell the people the truth. Dimmesdale often tried to tell the people in a roundabout way when he said “…though he (Dimmesdale) were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Enriched Classic ed. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.
A sinful nature is an aspect in man that makes him rebellious against God. Everyone has a sinful nature and it affects every part of us. Sin corrupts the human mind and has consequences for doing wrong in the eyes of the Lord. Every individual on Earth sins, and this is represented in the novel The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale to portray how different people cope with their sin and the consequences of that sin.
Secondly, Chillingworth’s actions were motivated by hate and a lust for revenge that overpowered him in the end. Therefore an awful change must have taken place in the doctor since “human nature loves more readily than it hates” (156). The actions of Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth were all motivated by a deep passion for one thing or another. However, the difference in their actions was that the adulteress and the minister acted out of love for each other while her husband acted out of anger and jealousy. Also, the physician underwent such a change that “there came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man’s soul were on fire, and kept smoldering duskily within his breast” (166). Eventually Chillingworth’s heart became so twisted and contorted that there were very noticeable differences in his personality.
Eventually coming to terms with his societal offense and accepting the love he shares for Hester and the product of his sin, Pearl, Dimmesdale decides to end his torment by revealing himself to society. However, as he relieves himself from the curse cast upon him, his body succumbs to his mental distress and physically weakness, leaving him a freed man as he takes his last breath. Dimmesdale inflicts himself with agony and distress as he chose to have an affair with Hester, but his ultimate downfall resulted because of his fear of social judgement and the consequences for committing such a crime. His choice to hide his dishonorable actions from society worsened his physical and mental health as he lived in constant angst of someone uncovering his scandalous secret and consequently leading to his passing away. As demonstrated by Oedipus and Dimmesdale, it is not one’s crime that leads them into misery; it is the emotional distress and guilt that tortures them and brings upon their greatest
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a study of the effects of sin on the hearts and minds of the main characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. Sin strengthens Hester, humanizes Dimmesdale, and turns Chillingworth into a demon.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1851. Rpt. In Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings. Ed. Leland S. Person. New York: Norton, 2005. 3-166. Norton Critical Edition.
http://www.chuckiii.com/reports/book_reports/scarlet_letter.html. March 1, 2002. Clendenning, John. The. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Baym, Nina. Introduction. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York City: Penguin Books USA, Inc. 1986.
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
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter." Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales. Ed. James McIntosh. New York: Norton, 1987.
The Scarlet Letter is a novel that deals with the theme of sin. Throughout history, people have committed all types of sins, and whether they are major or minor, people have been punished. However, the severity of a punishment is very difficult to agree on. Some people feel that sinners should be deeply punished no matter how little the wrongdoing was. Others feel that a person's punishment should be based upon the severity of their crime. However, what many people overlook is the fact that in time, we all have committed sins.
This accurately reveals the initialization of Chillingworth’s deceptiveness to the people in order to meet his motives of learning about Hester and her involvement with whom she cheated with. It is these people, which Chillingworth so cleverly duped into believing his erroneous identity and vocation, that declare Chillingworth is to watch over Dimmesdale for the next seven years. One of Chillingworth’s tasks is to determine why Dimmesdale’s soul is so heavy and sin-filled. He suggests that, “a bodily disease, which we look upon as a whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment of the spiritual part,” (Hawthorne 128). In this context, with the use of the first-person plural, Dimmesdale is being victimized through the condescending nature of Chillingworth. In this sense, Chillingworth is victimizing Dimmesdale, subjecting him to the unfortunate notion which society places on the ailment of one’s soul; the notion that sin, the so-called ailment, on one’s soul is eminently malicious. In essence,
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.
Baym, Nina. Introduction. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York City: Penguin Books USA, Inc. 1986.