Sin and its Effects on Dimmesdale and Hester.
Imagine going through your life carrying only a deep, dark secret with you. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne brings you into the live of four diverse characters that go through the ups and downs with keeping a huge sin within them. Hawthorne writes about how this sin destroys their life and brings along guilt and shame that they face throughout their judgmental Puritan community. As I explore in depth two of the main characters, Dimmesdale and Hester, I will compare and contrast just how they dealt with this sin that they kept hush, and how it slowly killed them. .
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, is a young clergy man who is well respected in his harsh community of strict Puritans is to condemn the punishment of wearing a scarlet A on her breast to who ever committed such a crime as adultery. As he gives such a punishment to Hester Prynne, the adulterer, the town applauds him that much more for doing what is right and punishing the wrong. At first Dimmesdale gains a certain power, strength from doing this, but that strength is slowly burned out leaving Dimmesdale anything but strong mentally, and physically. Dimmesdale, later turning out to be the father of Pearl, the product of Hester's sin, is now starting to feel the aspects and effects of the sin that he has committed. It is very ironic that Dimmesdale guilty of the sin himself has put a punishment upon Hester, and letting her take all the blame for it. Hester accepts her punishment freely, and tells not a soul that it was Dimmesdale who was her silent lover. Being that no one knows whom the father of Pearl is, Dimmesdale tells no one also, thinking that he can get off scotch-free. But, because Dimmesdale knows what he did, it makes him paranoid, thinking that everyone knows, and everyone is looking at him, like they looked at Hester. "Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father.