Dimmesdale’s Metamorphosis in The Scarlet Letter Essay example

Nelson Mandela once said, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” In most cases, it is difficult to distinguish and fully understand when you have changed. Whether it be a trivial change in habit to a crucial character transformation, it is best to set oneself up against an untouched canvas, and begin to analyze the newfangled person from there. Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, the concept of identifying one’s changes is apparent in two of the main characters, Pearl and Dimmesdale. Both characters experience their own engenderment of maturity and personal growth, though Dimmesdale’s involvement with it is much more deleterious in comparison to Pearl’s.

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter conveys the war between passion and responsibility, and how it concerns moral duty. Conflicts which Reverend Dimmesdale faces show readers how difficult it can be to come forward and reveal your sins. The circumstances which victimized Dimmesdale made it harder for him to accept responsibility publicly, which is the foundation of much of this novel. Hawthorne uses Dimmesdale’s character to convey the true struggle between passion and responsibility in The Scarlet Letter. While Dimmesdale yearned to face his sins, his passion overpowered him and took over the

The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era, adultery was taken as a very serious sin, and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin, their lives change, Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery, and she is constantly being tortured and is thought of as less than a person. Dimmesdale walks around with his sin kept as secret, because he never admits his sin, his mental state is changing, and the sin degrades his well-being. Chillingworth

Arthur Dimmesdale is a character portrayed in both the light and the dark by having passion for helping people yet by hiding his sin by holding “his hand over his heart” (Hawthorne 110). Even as a minister he struggled with the conflict of evil

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, the young Arthur Dimmesdale is a highly respected reverend in 17th century puritanical Massachusetts. However, he is the most morally ambiguous character in the novel because of the one great sin he commits and fails to readily confess. For this, he suffers an internal affliction that destabilizes his physical and spiritual composure. Dimmesdale’s sin was detrimental, but this action cannot qualify him as a bad person because in all other aspects, he is as righteous as the Puritans came. This moral ambiguity of Dimmesdale plays a pivotal role in the novel because it allows the reader to distinguish between true good and evil.

price of death, proved to be more harmful and more destructive than this sin of the flesh, and his sin against God. Socrates said, “Knowthyself,” and Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true.” If Reverend Dimmesdale had been true to himself he certainly wouldn’t have suffered as much as he did. What drove Dimmesdale to hold in his self-condemning truth? To

A reader may label Dimmesdale the purest of the sinners. Adultery, in the Christian world, is the one of the greatest sins a man can commit, second only to premeditated murder. In a Puritan society, it must be close to the same. Dimmesdale tries to purge himself of this evil sin by scourging and self-denial. However, he shies away from public confession, rationalizing the good he can instill in other men and women with his sermons. We find this illogical reasoning on page He endures Chillingworth's revenge and hatred while trying to preach what he doesn't practice. At his weakest point, Hester tempts him to cave in to the sin and do it all over again. Out of desperation to flee from the torture, he crumbles

Because of Dimmesdale’s connection with the Puritan Church and his unconfessed sin, his mental health deteriorates to the point of delusion. In order to lessen the guilt caused by his sin, Dimmesdale often practices nightlong fasts and vigils. Those fasts and vigils fail to lessen his guilt because they constitute a private confession. Because of the lack of public confession Dimmesdale starts to believe that he lives a lie; Dimmesdale symbolizes a moral compass for the Puritan community but is an unpunished adulterer. Dimmesdale and the Puritans believe that “to the untrue man, the whole universe is false” (Hawthorne 133). Hawthorne means that untrue men, such as Dimmesdale, create a fake reality in which those untrue men live in. Since Dimmesdale is an untrue man, his perception of what is real and what is false starts to slip, and he begins having visions of his bastard daughter pointing her finger at “the clergyman’s own breast” and because Dimmesdale creates a false reality, his visions and hallucinations combine with actual reality (Hawthorne 132). The guilt from Dimmesdale’s false life grows to the point that his “[delusions] were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with” (Hawthorne 133). When there is “no peril of discovery”, an attempt to publically

The third example of Dimmesdale is the worst sinner than Chillingworth is because he doesn’t have responsibility for what he has done. After Hester is out of prison, she is punished and she takes all the blame and their shared sin while Dimmesdale chooses to hide behind her. Dimmesdale let Hester and Pearl go through hash criticizing, disparaging, and insulting from everyone in the towns. People disparaging Hester by saying “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law

At the origin of the novel, Arthur Dimmesdale is young, healthy and enthused; he has no trouble with what he has done, he simply doesn’t think about it. Dimmesdale, the shining young minister of Boston, is described as a man whose “eloquence and

Chillingworth made Dimmesdale suffer by exaggerating his illness, and humiliating him with guilt of his sin “a bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but an ailment in the spiritual part”. the fragility and susceptibility of Dimmesdale states clearly his weakness, moreover.

"Life is hard, but accepting that fact makes it easier." This common phrase clearly states a harsh fact that Rev. Dimmesdale, a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, had to face. In this story of deception and adultery set in the Puritan era, Hawthorne introduces Dimmesdale as a weak and cowardly man who refuses to take responsibility for his actions.  The Rev. Dimmesdale is a transitional character in that he is, at the beginning of the novel, outwardly good but inwardly deceitful and by the end of the novel he becomes both outwardly and inwardly truthful.

When Chillingworth enters town, Dimmesdale’s reputation begins to change because the people believe that Dimmesdale is associating with the ‘black man’- Chillingworth. The community has seen that Dimmesdale’s association with Chillingworth has had a negative impact, and that causes his reputation to suffer. From the point in time when Chillingworth entered the town, the people have seen Dimmesdale become thinner and more nervous and darkness consume Chillingworth, leading to this change in reputation. Dimmesdale has also started holding his hand over his heart frequently, leading to the communal belief that the A was having more of an effect, especially through its effect on Chillingworth and Dimmesdale: “To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guide of old Roger Chillingworth” (112). By the end of the novel, Dimmesdale’s reputation was at it’s lowest point due to the revelation that he was Hester’s co-adulterer. The people were shocked when this was revealed, as “the multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit” (222). The conclusion to the novel discussed the repercussions of Dimmesdale’s

Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the popular, gifted, young clergyman and in which no expected, was Hester Prynne’s secretive lover. The citizens of Boston saw him as the perfect man, who could do no wrong. Little had they known, his sin was just as bad as Hester’s. Just like Black’s quote stated, Reverend Dimmesdale, acted on his light side, and used his sins to preach his best of sermons. Hawthorne stated on page 131, ‘To the high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed…”. As many can observe, the young clergyman was a tremendous minister. He preached wonderful sermons and truly showed himself to be a man of God. Dimmesdale was a talented young man with a dark side that few people knew of. “…Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must be there” (Hawthorne 131). This shows while he was preaching tremendous sermons, his health started to deteriorate, due to his inner guilt he was holding within himself. Perhaps if his lingering sin had not expended him, he would have been able live a happier, healthier life. However, unfortunately for him, the secret he was keeping was eating at him from the inside out and his darkness was prevailing. Dimmesdale’s sin of keeping the