The Struggle of the Heart

Sometimes it is easy to tell if someone is going through something, while other times it is not. Humans don’t always show their true emotions, or what they’re feeling on the inside. Many people are good at hiding their heart, and they’re good at guarding it too. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are a few examples of how characters are struggling with something on the inside, and it starts to show, and others can start to pick up on it. Arthur Dimmesdale is carrying the weight of his guilt all on his own, Hester just wants people to recognize that she is more than the letter she bares, and Roger Chillingworth wants a form of revenge.

Arthur Dimmesdale seems like the perfect man of God. The people of Boston view epitome of a good man. Truthfully, he’s more like the townspeople than they think he is. Dimmesdale feels this crushing guilt every single day of life. In Chapter 11, Nathaniel Hawthorne states, “All of that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, the Unforgiving!”(pg. 91). Most people, not just Dimmesdale, hide things from the world; they they tend to keep their hearts guarded and feelings hidden from the world. Dimmesdale has done something that the Puritan Church views as horrendous. This pain and guilt causes Dimmesdale to feel the need to punish himself as a way to balance out this sin he’s committed. Also in Chapter 11, part of Dimmesdale’s self torture is described; “He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking glass, by the most powerful light”(pg. 96). Dimmesdale hurts himself constantly. He becomes so tired that he often has visions or hallucinations. Thus, Dimmesdale is essentially sleep deprived, malnourished, and in constant pain as a result of the injuries he’s given himself.

Hester lives her life with two different forms of punishment for her sin; the scarlet letter “A” she bares on her chest, and Pearl. The townspeople associate Hester with the letter she wears everywhere she goes. Hester is shunned; she is not treated very well by the townspeople who she does work for. In Chapter 8, Governor Bellingham says to hester; ”Woman, it is thy badge of shame!” and then continues on to say, “It is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would transfer thy child to other hands”(pg. 61). Now, the Governor wants to take Pearl away from Hester and place her in a new home with a new family, mostly because of the scarlet letter Hester wears. They say all sins are the same in God’s eyes, but the Puritans treat Hester like she has done the worst thing a person can do. But when Hester finds out that there is talk of her being allowed to take it off, she does not really like the idea. In Chapter 14, Hester tells Chillingworth, “It lies not in the pleasure