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Short narrative essay on dimmesdale from the scarlet letter
Character analysis outline of hester prynee
Short narrative essay on dimmesdale from the scarlet letter
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Everyone waits outside the prison doors because they can’t wait to see Hester, our main heroine, stand alone on the scaffolding. In her arms, she carries the infant of an unknown father. She sees her ex-husband in the crowd, and he looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. People come to witness this from all around the town, because they obviously have nothing better to do. They want to see her be branded like a cow. There is a gleaming, embroidered “A” on her chest, and only an “A” because she was too dumb to spell ‘adultery’. That, as well as a lack of thread. Dimmesdale, a poor, pasty Reverend, walks on top of the scaffolding with Hester in order to question her about the baby daddy. Hester, unlike Maury, does not admit the identity of the father. SPOILER ALERT: It is Dimmesdale, the Reverend. During the much dramatic, and completely uneventful …show more content…
He needs to say a speech about the new Governor of Massachusetts, since the last one died, all of a sudden. He gives a super influential speech about sin, and it becomes very symbolic to many villagers for some reason. To us, it was a load of random Godly words, and a death. That’s right, Dimmesdale literally died right after the speech because of the guilt of his sin. Talk about a drama queen. Hester realizes she’ll never have a normal life and is sucked back into reality as her lover passes away. The spawn of the Devil and Hester go back to the old world for a while. After a couple of years, Hester moves back, for no apparent reason other than to screw herself over with wearing the “A” that she got to take off in the old world, or to be a good samaritan. We don’t know why she wouldn’t live her life out in England. I mean, that’s a pretty rad place to live. Shortly after moving back to the new world, and settling back into her old cottage. she dies and is buried by her lover who died of guilt in front of everyone. The story begins in tragedy and ends in
Consequently enough, Dimmesdale is trying to convince Hester to reveal the man who has sinned along with her, so the man can be relieved of his guilt, somewhat ironic because he is the man who has sinned along side with her. "What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without.
Many years later, in desperation for a remedy to cure his tortured soul, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale takes to the scaffold where Hester had once suffered her shame. He is envious of the public nature of her ...
In the words of Alexander Pope 'To err is human.' Everybody makes mistakes. It is human nature. However, how one deals with the mistake is much more important than the mistake itself. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Dimmesdale and Danforth's sins have similar motives, but the characters have distinctly different methods of sin and resolution.
These quote from chapter twenty (The Minister in a Maze) offers a unique view into the minds of Arthur Dimmesdale. He is a young, pale, and physically delicate person.We get to know the young minister’s daily experiences and his thoughts about Hester, Pearl and the other characters who surround him. Hester is a young woman sent to the colonies by her husband, who plans to join her later but does not make it since they presume he is lost in the sea. Normally, one cannot serve two masters at a go since at the long run one of a person’s characters will oversee the other. In this essay herein, we are going to highlight the characters and actions of Dimmesdale and Hester in relation to the quote,"No man for any considerable period can wear
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.
Cowardice creates self-destructive lies with which an individual must conceal themselves to delay the inevitable ramifications of their wickedness. The Bible states, “the cowardly…sexually immoral…idolaters and all liars [will] be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (NIV Revelations 21:8). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, depicted a holy minister who hypocritically hid within cowardice despite the commands of the Biblical teaching in which he preached. Through reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s actions and motivations, cowardice was exemplified in order to prove the minister’s regret of adultery with a woman who was less significant to him than Hawthorne’s readers were led to believe. Arthur Dimmesdale’s weakness in hiding behind
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.
Hester is a youthful, beautiful, proud woman who has committed an awful sin and a scandal that changes her life in a major way. She commits adultery with a man known as Arthur Dimmesdale, leader of the local Puritan church and Hester’s minister. The adultery committed results in a baby girl named Pearl. This child she clutches to her chest is the proof of her sin. This behavior is unacceptable. Hester is sent to prison and then punished. Hester is the only one who gets punished for this horrendous act, because no one knows who the man is that Hester has this scandalous affair with. Hester’s sin is confessed, and she lives with two constant reminders of that sin: the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl, the child conceived with Dimmesdale. Her punishment is that she must stand upon a scaffold receiving public humiliation for several hours each day, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest, represe...
The sky is a canvas to the eyes of Arthur Dimmesdale, filled with the faint, twinkling light of the stars. The slight glow is enough spotlight for the guilty man to handle, and the extra light that appears from an approaching town member is too much for the stricken pastor to handle. Cowering over the confession that dwells on the edge of his tongue, he misses the chance to free himself from the inner shame that binds him and sets his degenerating heart apart from the healthily-beating one of his past lover that is free from the weight of a scandalous secret. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne develops the character of Arthur Dimmesdale by way of his ill-defined sermons and public interactions with the Puritan townspeople that contrast with his deep talks with Hester and
When Hester Prynne becomes pregnant without her husband, she is severely punished by having to endure public humiliation and shame for her adulterous actions. Hester is forced to wear a scarlet “A”on her breast for the rest of her life. (1.) She lives as an outcast. At first, Hester displays a defiant attitude by boldly march from prison towards the pillory. However, as time goes on, the public humiliation of her sin weighs heavily upon her soul. “An accustomed eye had likewise it’s own aguish to inflict. It’s cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always th...
Hester and Dimmesdale’s affair goes undiscovered until Hester is pregnant and bears a child without having her husband present. As her punishment, Hester is forced to stand on the scaffold in the middle of the market place, with an A on her chest. Dimmesdale has not told a single person that he is the adulterer. He sits in the balcony with the Governor, a judge, a general, and the rest of the ministers, watching the display, without any expression or emotion. Hester and Pearl go to the Governor’s home to deliver a pair of gloves, but more importantly to inquire about the possibility of the government taking away her child. Also there with Governor Bellingham are Pastor Wilson, Reverend Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth. After Mr. Wilson asks Pearl a few questions, the Governor decides that Hester is unfit as a mother and that the child would be better off in the hands of the church. Hester begs Dimmesdale, whom she says knows everything about her and has charge of her soul, to speak for her. Therefore, he does, convincing the Governor to let Hester keep Pearl. This is Dimmesdale’s first step to becoming the moral blossom. Late at night, a few years after the previous incident, Dimmesdale takes a walk through the town. He climbs onto the scaffold and pretends to confess; though there is no one out at this time at night. Hester and Pearl, on their way home, pass Dimmesdale on the scaffold. Dimmesdale calls out to them and they join him, standing hand in hand in the darkness. Dimmesdale has begun the road to confession by acknowledging Hester and Pearl and by acting out confession. Now he feels guiltier than ever.
When being questioned on the identity of her child’s father, Hester unflinchingly refuses to give him up, shouting “I will not speak!…my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one!” (47). Hester takes on the full brunt of adultery, allowing Dimmesdale to continue on with his life and frees him from the public ridicule the magistrates force upon her. She then stands on the scaffold for three hours, subject to the townspeople’s disdain and condescending remarks. However, Hester bears it all “with glazed eyed, and an air of weary indifference.” (48). Hester does not break down and cry, or wail, or beg for forgiveness, or confess who she sinned with; she stands defiantly strong in the face of the harsh Puritan law and answers to her crime. After, when Hester must put the pieces of her life back together, she continues to show her iron backbone and sheer determination by using her marvelous talent with needle work “to supply food for her thriving infant and herself.” (56). Some of her clients relish in making snide remarks and lewd commends towards Hester while she works, yet Hester never gives them the satisfaction of her reaction.
Both committed adultery but have suffered in different ways. Hester’s punishment composed of public shaming on the scaffold for all to behold, but afterwards she did not suffer from guilt because she confessed her sin, unlike Dimmesdale, who did not confess, but rather let his sin become the “black secret of his soul” (170), as he hid his vile secret and became described as the “worst of sinners” (170). He leads everyone to believe of his holiness as a minister and conceals the, “Remorseful hypocrite that he was [is]” (171). Hester, a sinner too, however, does not lie about how she lives and therefore, does not suffer a great torment in her soul. While she stays healthy, people begin to see Hester’s Scarlet Letter turn into a different meaning, of able or angel, and they view her in a new light, of how she really lives. Dimmesdale however, becomes sickly and weak after “suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul” (167). He hides behind a false mask as he is described as possessing, “Brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head” (300), and perceived as the most honorable man in New England. People do not see him as truly himself, but rather who he hides
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.
Guilt is a very strong emotion, and it can take a merciless toll on a person. For most people, guilt is often a short-lived feeling because we confess why we feel guilty and get it off of our chests. However, this is hardly the case for Arthur Dimmesdale, the father of Hester Prynne’s child in the novel The Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale does not confess that he has committed a sin with Hester, and for a brutal seven whole years, he withholds his guilt inside of him. Throughout all of that time, he reverts to self-punishment in the form of fasting, consecutive, sleepless vigils, and relentless studying of the Bible. The public viewed all of these activities as noble acts of devotion to God, and they only admired him more and more. This public veneration just made him feel like he was even more of a horrible person and that his whole life was based upon a lie. Also, Dimmesdale was faced to live with and be tormented by not only his overwhelming guilt of sin, but was moreover forced to live with Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, who plagued him almost as much as his own conscience. These are all reasons why I believe that Dimmesdale suffers most out of any main character in this novel.