Dimmesdale’s Moral Tragedy The Ten Commandments plainly say you, "'Shall not commit adultery.” In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s historical story, The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, bares the most brutal effects of such sin. This is due to several reasons. The most observable reason for his eventual breakdown is the fact that he keeps his sin a secret. Arthur Dimmesdale's sin was the same as Hester's, except Arthur, through his own disagreeable actions, leaves himself in a position to either ignore the community's idea that he is a pure and Godly man or to trick them. For most of The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale chose to lie.
Though, his weak frame and sickly appearance only make his congregation think he is even more holy. The congregation accounts his ill visage to his “unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral relation” (112). Yet behind closed doors, Dimmesdale would “[wield] the bloody scourge” and would hide his scarlet letter that he wore “imprinted in flesh” (268) from the public eye. The Puritan’s greatest sinner, is hidden behind lies and acts as the holiest and looked up to member in the
Sin and Death in Paradise Lost Abstract: Death assumes in his original argument, with most readers of Paradise Lost, that Satan is all bad, having rejected God, and presumably that his charisma is illusory. Sin assumes, with Empson, that Satan's entire career, including his corruption of Eve, is the project of an all-powerful and sinister God. By the time Satan gets to Mt. Niphates in Book IV he is convinced of both; he recognizes that his misery is his own fault for rejecting God, but he knows that God is still in control of him and of his miseries even though he has brought them on himself. Essay begins below.
Satan wants to divert our attention away from God and onto ourselves. He has always been envious of the praise, adoration and honor and love that God receives from his church. Satan would rather that we sulk and pout instead of “forget about ourselves and concentrate on Him and worship Him”. I have found that this is one of the many the keys to gaining spiritual victory. By “silencing the enemy” in our lives, we can remove strongholds that Satan has set up in our minds simply by singing the praises of God and walking in the spirit.
His life's work has been dedicated to God, and now his sin has tainted it. He feels that he is a fraud and is not fit to lead the people of the town to salvation. His secret guilt a much heavier burden than Hester's since he must hold it all within himself. This also reveals Dimmesdale weakness. Arthur wanted desperately to admit his sin to the world, which is shown throughout the book.
The community’s expectations cause Dimmesdale to punish himself for his sin instead of confessing. He struggles for years to come to terms with his mistake, and in the end he is able to accept his true identity and confess his sin publicly. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne illustrates how the community’s influence over Dimmesdale prevents him from embracing his true identity, highlighting the negative effects the community can have on a person. Negative and restrictive diction are used to portray the detrimental aspects of the community’s strict laws, which prevent Dimmesdale from revealing his true identity to the public. The Puritans are described as, “…a people amongst whom religion and law [are] almost identical, and in whose character both [are] so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline [are] alike made venerable and awful,” illustrating the high expectations of the community and the pressure their laws place on Dimmesdale (Hawthorne 47-48).
We seem not to be able to relate to them because of the fact that they are perfect imagine from god himself. The fear we can concluded from there downfall is that they tried to know everything and perhaps be god like themselves. The warnings from Raphael in Books V and VI increase the intensity of man’s impending doom that will soon to be a reality. The significant part of this is that we have to feel like they can sin themselves before we can relate to the characters that Milton put in
If Creon is not so narcissistic, he could escape his downfall by listening to Teiresias’s advice. Instead, Creon decides to ignore the warning signs because he feels that the “prophecy is for sale” (v 60) In disregarding Teiresias, Creon forces the Gods to act by punishing him for his wrongdoings. Creon’s punishment is one of much peril that forces him to rethink his views and the views of the Gods. “Fortunate is the man who has never tasted God’s vengeance! Where once the anger of the heavens has struck, the house is shaken forever” (Ode 2 1-3).
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... ... middle of paper ... ...ter.” (149). While Hester had to receive the penance of her actions and conquer it, Dimmesdale was still in hiding like the coward he presented himself as. He views Hester as the one that got the better end of the situation by saying “Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!” (167) Dimmesdale envies Hester’s letter because she has no need to hide form anyone and live in secret.
Paeadise Lost In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, we can see that there are the two ideas damnation and salvation through the characters of Satan and Adam & Eve, respectively. It is Satan’s sin of pride that first causes him to fall from God’s grace and into the depths of hell. This same pride is also what keeps him from being able to be reconciled to God, and instead, leads him to buy into his own idea of saving himself. With Adam & Eve, we see that although they too, disobeyed God, they repented of their sin, and were reconciled to the Divinity through the saving judgement of the Son. It is their ability to admit their wrong doings to God that allow them to have the promise of returning to Paradise; something that Satan was not able to do.