A/N: Essay for English class. I was a little too proud of it, so here it is.
Demise from Heartbreak
Andre Gide wrote, "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not." This quote holds a resonance in many works of literature, none more so than in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It applies to almost all the characters featured in the story, especially the sinners Hester Prynne and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. The young minister ultimately met his demise after battling his guilt secretly for many years; he chose to expose his secret as a dying man in the hope that all could be forgiven, realizing too late that he could have lived a far happier life if he had only confessed his sin.
Dimmesdale arguably suffered more than any other character in the story. He lived with the guilt of knowing that he not only committed a sin, but also that he left the woman he loved hanging out to dry in front of the angry townspeople. When she served her punishment up on the scaffold, he was forced to interrogate her about the identity of her lover, knowing that in a few words she could ruin him but trusting that she would not. He watched her live in exile with their daughter. He watched as the other townsfolk scorned her and avoided her as though she was some type of contagious disease. Even more horrible, he was driven to live his own life pretending. Everything the world saw of him was an act, a falsity, a lie, and his polluted soul was expected to assist and cleanse souls far purer. He listened to the townspeople deem him saint. He heard them as they repented to him and requested that he pray for their immortal spirits, while inside he wished to ask them for the same, but didn't dare come close to revealing his secret misdemeanor. In his own words: "What can a ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the redemption of other souls?—or a polluted soul towards these purifications?"
On top of his guilty conscience (or perhaps because of it), Dimmesdale's health went on a steady decline through the story. Even early on in the story, he was described as pale. As it progressed, illness ravaged his body so that he appointed a personal healer, Roger Chillingworth, who, unbeknownst to him, was the former husband of Hester Prynne. He was frequently too weak to function without his medications, and even after the physician discovered the minister's grave secret, he was compelled to continue taking the medications given to him because he couldn't give his sermons without them; though he feared poison, he had no choice. When Hester spied on him from the trees, it was noted, "He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice…There was a listlessness in his gait; as if he saw no reason for taking one step farther, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad…to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree." In the same paragraph, it stated, "Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided." At the end, when Dimmesdale finally confessed his transgressions to his congregation with his dying breaths, he believed that God would let them into the kingdom of heaven. However, his sudden death presents another question: was it possible that Chillingworth poisoned the minister in the hope of finally exacting the revenge over the wife he lost? Would Dimmesdale have had a chance at a happy life at long last if he only had trusted the physician less?
It was also noted that Dimmesdale's mental health deteriorated. When he placed himself on the scaffold in the hope of getting some relief from the guilt that plagued him till death, he shrieked into the night air, almost as though he hoped someone would find him there and see the scarlet letter upon his chest. He spoke to his pastor friend and was surprised when the man didn't answer back, only to realize that he hadn't spoken aloud at all, and his friend was unaware of his presence. The guilt drove him to insanity so deep that he believed himself to be hallucinating as Hester approached him in the forest, and he asked her, "Is it thou? Art thou in life?" To his mind, she could have just as easily been a phantom, a figment of his imagination sent by God to torment him all the more.
Hester Prynne may have been the one to stand on the scaffold before the people and suffer for her sins; she may have suffered exile and alienation. She lost everything that was important to her save for her child. But Dimmesdale's pain was far greater. He bore a silent burden. He relied on her to keep his sin secret while she underwent punishment for both of them. He watched her trickle through his fingers like sand, and he had to live with himself. He had to hold up a façade that no one else needed to support. He had to grieve in the blackest hours of the morning when no one would be there to witness his agony. He watched his daughter from afar and wondered what it would be like to have a role in her life. Self-reproach can have a far more deteriorating effect on the mind than illness on the body, and Arthur Dimmesdale went to the very end filled with remorse and shame for his transgressions. Hester was able to recover from her punishment and went on the live a full life. Dimmesdale was never able to live to his fullest. His was a life ended too quickly under the effect of heartbreak and shame, and his compilation of suffering—hiding, not knowing his daughter, lying to his entire congregation of people who thought him a saint—brought him to an unfortunate, untimely end.