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Critically analyse The Scarlet Letter
Analysis on the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne
Analysis on the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne
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Recommended: Critically analyse The Scarlet Letter
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale are an important pairing. Not only are they crucial to the novel, but their pairing is related to the prisoners’ dilemma. The prisoners’ dilemma is an illustration relating to confessing or remaining silent. Depending on how each prisoner reacts, they receive different sentences. Hester and Dimmesdale are an affirmation of this matrix. Remaining silent could either turn out to be extremely good or exceedingly bad. Textual evidence is a strong example of Hester and Dimmesdale’s pairing. Hester is a convicted adulterer early into the novel. Because the town knows about her sin early on, they learn to accept what she has done. The community began to think positively about the situation, as the text says, “Such helpfulness was found in her... many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; …show more content…
Dimmesdale understands the consequences of remaining silent, but continues to stay silent. He refers to himself in third person, and says, “Be not silent from and mistaken pity...to add hypocrisy to sin?” [ch.3, 134]. Hester already confessed, and now he stays in silence, suffering with physical and mental pain. He chose not to confess, and is now in a figurative “jail” where he is trapped with his pain in a community that greatly frowns upon adultery. Hester and Dimmesdale are a pairing that is important to the novel; they create an illustration of the prisoners’ dilemma. Dimmesdale recognized his actions, but continued to stay silent, which hurts him. On the other hand, Hester publicly confessed her adultery. As a result, she did not have as much pain as Dimmesdale. The puritan community also began to believe the “A” meant able, not its intended meaning. Certainly, confessing is a much better choice than staying silent, and as a result, it will most definitely benefit the
The first theme expressed in The Scarlet Letter is that even well meaning deceptions and secrets can lead to destruction. Dimmesdale is a prime example of this; he meant well by concealing his secret relationship with Hester, however, keeping it bound up was deteriorating his health. Over the course of the book this fact is made to stand out by Dimmesdale’s changing appearance. Over the course of the novel Dimmesdale becomes more pale, and emaciated. Hester prevents herself from suffer the same fate. She is open about her sin but stays loyal to her lover by not telling who is the father of Pearl. Hester matures in the book; becomes a stronger character.
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.
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 to the public with no doubt of his guilt, it was upon the spot where Hester served her punishment for their crime....
Both characters had to live with the shame and guilt, but how they dealt with it during their lives was different. The two both had a physical symbol on them that they had to live with for their whole lives. Unlike Hester, Dimmesdale’s mark was branded on his chest where no one could see it. The community was clueless to what Dimmesdale had done. He concealed his transgression from the town, causing his guilt to build up inside of him. In contrast, everyone knew that Hester had committed adultery. She was forced to stand on a scaffold and be publicly humiliated in front of everyone. The scarlet letter “A” was displayed on her clothes for everyone to see. Instead of Hester being ashamed and living in guilt her whole life, like Dimmesdale did, she used her transgression as a form of strength. Even though Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale committed the same sin, the path in which they took to cope with that sin set them apart as
As a spiritual leader, it is his responsibility not only to condemn Hester of her sins, but also when the sinner does not repented for them, they are to be set aside from society which results in Hester making the letter “A” beautiful. We see that hear through this quote, “[g]ood Master Dimmesdale,.. the responsibility of this woman’s soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as proof and consequence thereof” (pg. 62). After stating this the people wait for his direction. He leans over the balcony and commands her to disclose the name of the man she had slept with. She, however, refuses to relinquish the name, as she knows it is better for her to keep quiet, until he decides that it is time to come forward with the truth. This is only exemplifies the hypocrisy within Dimmesdale. Not only in this story of the Scarlet Letter, but throughout the early churches we often see religious leaders in this predicament of coming forward or not coming forward with the truth of their role within certain situations. Hester, on the other hand, is portrayed as strong but also abandoned, because she is standing alone for the sins she could not have committed alone. Dimmesdale also struggles within confessing to Pearl the truth and keeping it from her. At first he is regarded as being selfish for not
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...
The Scarlet Letter is a classic novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which entangles the lives of two characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale together through an unpardonable sin-adultery. With two different lifestyles, this act of adultery affects each of them differently. Hester is an average female citizen who is married to a Roger Chillingworth from Europe while Dimmesdale is a Puritan minister from England (61). Along the course of time after the act of adultery had happened, Hester could not hide the fact that she was bearing a child that was not of her husband, but from another man. She never reveals that this man is in fact Arthur Dimmesdale, and so only she receives the punishment of prison. Although it is Hester who receives the condemnation and punishment from the townspeople and officials, Dimmesdale is also punished by his conscience as he lives his life with the secret burden hanging between him and Hester.
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...
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
As soon as Hester stands on the stocks with Pearl for a day without him, Dimmesdale becomes forever haunted from his guilty conscience. He self-inflicts a great deal of harm upon himself both physically and mentally. “And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro” (Hawthorne 128). Dimmesdale comes close to confession many times, but cowardice and self-preservation come into play, affecting his decision. He is unable to summon the power to confess, but instead tortures himself and engraves an “A” by his heart. He quickly realizes that he will not survive long in his current situation.
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.
How much punishment and tourture can one withstand, especially when it's mental punishment instead of physical? Hester Prynne committed the sin of adultery which has led her to a life of isolation and ridicule. She is branded and made to wear the scarlet letter A on the chest of her dress for the rest of her life. Her daughter will never get to play with the rest of the children. The scaffold, however, is the biggest burden. She has to stand in front of the crowd and watch them gossip and talk about her before she goes back into the prison. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne shows her humiliation through the setting and her reaction to the crowd.
In the puritan society one is judged by what someone has done in the past or their role in society. Both Hester and Dimmesdale are judged by whom the puritan people think they are. For Hester, the first thing they do when they see her emerge from the doors of the jail is judge her by her looks. For instance the author explained her as, "...tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which ,beside being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity" (Hawthorne 46). The women who judge her are viewed as gossipers and judging from jealousy and just out to hurt her. Hester never acts this way towards anyone and she is still viewed as a terrible sinner who should possible die because of a sin. Dimmesdale is viewed as a wise man, a great speaker, and someone to look up to. This is because he is the minister of the community which is highly respected in the puritan society. People viewed him with so much respect that when Dimmesdale admitted his crime, no one could believe it or even believed what they had seen. There were multiple thoughts of what had happened. By way of illustration, “...and the wonderful
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.
While Hester tries to protect Dimmesdale by not giving the name of Pearl's father, she actually condemns him to a long road of suffering, self torture and disappointment. She does this by letting him keep the sin he committed in secret while he watches her being publicly punished. Chillingworth observes Dimmesdale's desire to confess, as well as his lack of willpower to do so. Dimmesdale rationalizes not confessing; all the while Chillingworth is torturing with constant reminders of his hypocrisy. Hester never voluntarily confesses to committing adultery, and never feels any remorse for it. Her public punishment comes not as a result of her having any contrition, but rather her apparent pregnancy. She stays in the town to be close to Dimmesdale, as a reader would find on page 84, "There dwelt...the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union..." She also stays in town to convince others, as well as herself, that she is actually regretful for her sin even though she knows in her heart she is not. She does this to appease her guilt. As Hawthorne puts it on page 84, "Here...had been the scene of her guilt...