Arthur Dimmesdale and John Proctor's Guilt and Sin

Arthur Dimmesdale and John Proctor's Guilt and Sin

Guilt is something that weighs heavily on the human soul. It

incorporates itself in our dreams, our thoughts, and our actions.

Everywhere we turn, it stares us blankly in the face. While it is

unbearable to suffer, guilt is an emotion that reaffirms our humanity.

Repentance of a particular guilt, being spiritual, physical or both,

is evidence that we are beyond the baseness of our animal tendencies.

This fact has not gone unnoticed to the many great figures of

literature. They have explored the sentiments of guilt and repentance

by exploiting the conscience of flawed characters. In The Scarlet

Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne presented to the world Reverend Arthur

Dimmesdale, a man suffering in a past sin. Likewise, in his play The

Crucible, the great modern playwright, Arthur Miller, penned the

character of John Proctor to allegorize the dangers of moral

passivity. Their guilt and repentance were the primary causes of their

“undoing”.

Dimmesdale and Proctor were both martyrs to their sin. More

specifically, they were both martyrs to the sin of adultery. Being a

man of the cloth, this was especially painful for Dimmesdale. How

could “a ruined soul like [his] effect toward the redemption of other

souls?” (Hawthorne 182). As he confessed so mournfully to Hester, his

partner in sin, “Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation, that I

must stand up in my pulpit and meet so many eyes turned up to my as if

the light of heaven were beaming from it…and then look inward, and

discern the black reality of what they idolize?”(Hawthorne 182). He

was so consumed by his hypocrisy that he turned to self-masochism as a

means of escape. In stark contrast to Hester’s outward ...

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...e”(Miller 22). All he

wanted to do was get on with his farming and continue to live happily

with his wife. It was only when the witch hunt directly affected him

did he realize the gravity of his mistake. This was completely

different to Dimmesdale’s seven long years of suffering. However,

unlike Dimmesdale, when faced with the decision to confess and live or

stand by his convictions and die, Proctor’s love for life interfered.

He had so much to live for including his children and his livelihood.

Only his honor steered him back to the importance of his cause.

Arthur Dimmesdale and John Proctor were both martyrs for personal and

societal guilt. They paid earthly penances and the final penance of

death. Their “undoing” was a necessity for a society at the brink.

Without their sacrifice, the society they lived in would have

collapsed under its own weight.