Chapter One: The Prison Door Summary A large crowd of Puritans stands outside of the prison, waiting for the door to open. The prison is described as a, "wooden jail...already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy fr...
Reverend Dimmesdale pleads to Hester to reveal the father's identity, but still, she refuses. ... Meanwhile, venerable Reverend Dimmesdale's body starts to waste away from a mysterious heart condition. ... This offer is actually a malicious excuse to verify whether or not Dimmesdale is Hester's lover, because Chillingworth suspects there is a connection between Dimmesdale's ailing condition and an emotional distress. ... Dimmesdale clutches his heart instinctively and admits to Hester that he hates Chillingworth. The doctor then asks what Dimmesdale is doing there. ...
Arthur Miller's The Crucible best illustrates this hypocritical attraction-abhorrence nature of the Puritans. ... This novel does not deal so much with witches as it does with the Black Man, which "is a traditional American name for the Devil."44 In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. ... Prynne, her presumed-dead husband, returns to discover all of this.45 Now called Roger Chillingworth to hide his identity, he sinks to a new low as he tortures Dimmesdale by keeping him alive to suffer his guilt and shame.46 Chillingworth become...
