Dimmesdale's Sin

In Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter, although Dimmesdale does reveal his sin and claims Pearl, he is unable to triumph over his sin because of his need for his reputation in the town to be untainted, a restriction he fails to eliminate from his soul. The Puritan community is incapable to see sin as anything other than a hamartia which forces Dimmesdale into a battle with himself about his need for self importance against his guilt. A battle which ultimately ends in Dimmesdale being consumed by his guilt. Despite inflicting pain on to himself and his many attempts to reveal his sin to the town, the townspeople are unable to look past the veil of holiness they have placed on their minister. The irremovable veil prevents Dimmesdale from being able …show more content…
More than once he has attempted to reveal to the people the sin he has committed, but he is only met by an abundance of affirmations and praise. “He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self- acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self- deceived.” (130) Dimmesdale understood that by constantly telling the people that he was vain, he only made it more difficult for his followers to believe him. Hawthorne’s syntax and diction, seen by the focus on the word self, acknowledge that by only receiving praise, Dimmesdale’s attempting to reveal his sin was making it harder for himself to accept the sin, and therefore ever increasing the fraud inside of him. This transformation into a fraud caused by his followers inability to recognize his sin, and therefore his inability as well, effects his ability to triumph over his sin. In his final attempt at revealing his sin, the towns people, blinded by their idea that their minister is the holiest of beings, cannot possibly view Dimmesdale as a sinful person. As he steps on to the scaffold, a symbol for sin, the narrator describes the towns reaction: “[O]nly another phase of the minister’s celestial strength; nor would it …show more content…
Dimmesdale does not make peace with God, and therefore does not triumph over his sin. As Dimmesdale begins his speech he addresses the crowd in the same enchanting voice that they have looked to for the past seven years. Preaching to the crowd, Dimmesdale shouts: “’[Y]e that loved me!—ye, that have deemed me holy!—behold me here, the one sinner of the world!’” (233) Dimmesdale feels that because he has kept his sin hidden for seven years he deserves the title of being the only sinner in the towns eyes. Dimmesdale is preaching and complimenting the people’s mercifulness, and believes that by admitting himself as the ultimate sinner they will pity him, which is shown by Hawthorne’s diction. Dimmesdale fails to see that by giving himself this label, he is showing that he possesses yet another sin: vanity. Although vanity is usually seen when someone prides themselves, Dimmesdale is sinning because he fails to acknowledge that Hester and Chillingworth have committed similar sins, and instead is making himself the ultimate being of sin. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses weeds as a recurring theme that have been interconnected with malevolent beings. The narrator describes Dimmesdales body that lied on the scaffold after his death. “[I]nsomuch that he positively withered up, shriveled away and almost vanished