Dimmmesdale Character Analysis Essay

Dimmesdale's Humanly Instincts When you commit a sinful action is it your natural instinct to tell the truth so that you can move forward with your life, or do you often hide it and let the guilt build up inside of you until to the point of intolerability? Most would answer that they hide the truth even if they know not to, becasue for humans, facing the realities of our actions can be a terrifying. As the character that most closely aligns with realistic human characteristics, Hawthorne uses Dimmesdale as a vehicle for expressing the imperfections of human nature. Harsh realities like payment for sin, cowardice and hypocrisy are all realities of human life. While there are numerous ways in which humans are inherently evil, Hawthorne asserts …show more content…
The hypocrisy of Dimmesdale's character is that he is a reverend who stresses honesty and purity. However, little do his followers know, he suffers from his dishonesty from the truth of his impure sin. As Hawthorne describes, the people view Dimmesdale's words "like the speech of an angel" (48). The description of an angel implies purity and innocence which opposes Dimmesdale's true identity. Kristin Boudreau in her essay, A Model Of Christian Charity reinforces a similar idea that the community "has selected him as its prophet and saint" (Boudreau, page 19). In these multiple instances, Hawthorne compares the awe of the community members of the simplicity and purity of Dimmesdale's life to the fact that he does not follow his own words. In comparison to Hester, whose words and actions align, Dimmesdale seems a fraud and liar. Through the exclusion of hypocrisy in Hester's life and abundance of [hypocrisy] in Dimmesdale's, Hawthorne further implicates the humanlike behavior of Dimmesdale's character. Along with sin and cowardice, hypocrisy is a natural behavioral practice of humans and the result of all three are guilt and