The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Recommended: Three distinct conflicts in the scarlet letter

“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” Martin Luther King Jr. This quotes means to understand anyone you have to understand they are not all bad or all good. That shows to the reader that the character is dynamic. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmsdale is a complex character; who is loving and caring yet at the same time is selfish and callous towards others. Three characters you see his interactions with that are loving and caring but also selfish and callous are God, Hester Prynne and Pearl.
Arthur Dimmsdale is compassionate and caring towards God. The first way that Arthur Dimmsdale is caring towards God is he becomes a pastor. This shows his compassion towards God because he is sharing God with everyone else which is something God wants us to do. Another way that Arthur Dimmsdale shows that he cares for God is when he commits a sin he goes through deep repentance. This is an example of how he is a compassionate character because when he knows he does something wrong he feels deeply ashamed by it and repents to make up for what he did. The last way that Dimmsdale is a compassionate character is how even though he feels he can never go to heaven he leads other people on the path to heaven. This compassionate towards God because he tries to help everyone find the right path which brings them to God. This is why Arthur Dimmsdale is loving and caring towards God.

Contrasting that Arthur Dimmsdale is selfish and callous on how he acts towards God. The first way that Dimmsdale shows this is the fact that he committed a sin in the first place. He broke the rules and went against what God wa...

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... similarities and know that he is a fraud. The last way that Dimmsdale is very callous and selfish towards Pearl is that he is always watching over her but if something is happening to her for fear of his own exposure he doesn’t intervene. This is how Dimmsdale although loving and caring towards Pearl is also callous and selfish and thinks only for himself.
In conclusion, Dimmsdale is a character who in the book is portrayed as not all good and also not all bad. He displays love and compassion towards God, Hester and Pearl, yet at the same time he shows that he is also very callous and selfish towards them. In the end you see that the author Hawthorne expresses to you that Dimmsdale is not all evil or heavenly like that we all have inner conflicts that control how to the outer world we act.

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The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
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