Arthur Dimmesdale A Sinner

Committing a sin does not only hurt the victim, but the sinner as well. For instance, when Arthur Dimmesdale, a reputable priest of a Puritan community in colonial Boston, commits the sin of adultery with a married woman named Hester Prynne, he is overwhelmed with fear and guilt of his crime being publicized. In the book The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale’s character develops through his inner conflicts of cowardice and remorse stemming from his wrongdoing. His journey through the novel teaches the reader that one’s criminal deeds will destroy a person with shame if it is not confessed. One important detail of Dimmesdale is his cowardice. Dimmesdale is a priest, so he feels completely guilty for committing adultery, unlike Hester Prynne, who accepts her wrongdoing and moves forward in her life with her daughter Pearl. Seeing Hester without the weight of the community’s scrutiny on her, Dimmesdale demands her to tell the name of her illegitimate child’s father, as a Puritan priest and as her cowardly lover. “If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow sinner and fellow sufferer!” (Hawthorne 64). In this passage, …show more content…
The priest, on his last days of living, decides to end his suffering by going on top of the scaffold, and addressing to his fellow Puritans, “‘People of New England!’, and, with the last of his strength, he cries,“‘ye that have loved me! - ye that have deemed me holy! behold me - here, the one sinner of the world’”(241)! Dimmesdale’s honest act means he has finally broken free from his fear of destroying his position in the Puritan community. He wants to move on from his wrongdoing and live without the weight of shame. In conclusion, Dimmesdale’s act of confession to sin is his renouncement from cowardice and path to