Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester’s Quest for Identity in Hawthornes S

Dimmesdale and Hesters Quest for individuality in The Scarlet Letter While allegory is an explicit and allure reading of Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, I see in this fresh also the potential of a psychological reading, interpreting it as a search for ones induce self. Both Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne goes through this do and finally succeeded in finding the duality of ones personality, and the impossibility of complementing the split in the midst of individual and community identity. However, they were compelled to take different paths on this journey, and they react sooner differently when they finally arrive at the conclusion of this search. Dimmesdale and Hester start egress from the analogous point their adultery. This sin shakes them out of place from their tracks, and begins their long and touchy journey. Dimmesdales crime is kept privy, just it does not mean that he can forget it or deny it. As a well-respected minister, he stands at the center of his comm unity, being the advocate of religious and moral standards of that puritan society. Whereas the Puritans are as a whole stern and strict concerning evils and sins, he is even more conscious of them than anyone else. The values he holds condemn him with a strong sense of guilt, precisely because he is his declare prosecutor. The pain is sharp because not only has he sinned, but he has to bear the secret of it It was inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him He longed to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was. I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a rest (143) Not only does he have to bear the guilt of his crime, but h... ...uld have grown ripe for it, in Heavens own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to wee-wee the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. (263) As Dimmesdale represents the society-bound per son, oppressing his passions, and Hester the societys exile, proudly denying her pauperism for social support, the sad truth they discover, although through different ways, is one of the same that one needs both individual freedom and social belonging. Although it is out(predicate) for them to have both, and complete themselves, at least they have come to the acquaintance of this truth. Works Cited Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Oxford and New York Oxford University Press, 1998. Girgus, Sam B. Desire and The Political syncope in American Literature. New York St. Martins Press, 1990.