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Sin vs. Secret
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote one of America’s first novels, The Scarlet Letter. It shows how hidden sins change people through the two male characters, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth.
The two male characters look nothing alike. When introduced, Dimmesdale has a voice that is “tremulously sweet, rich, deep and broken” (63). He is “a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow” (62). Dimmesdale has a unique “apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look” (62). On the other hand, when Hawthorne introduces Chillingworth, he is “small in stature with a furrowed visage” (56). One of his “shoulders rose higher than the other” (57). He is a “man well stricken in years, a pale, thin scholar like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight” (55).
Although educated men where rare in Colonial Boston, both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale are educated. Both are ministers in their own field, Dimmesdale to the soul, and Chillingworth to the body. Chillingworth is “an eminent Doctor of Physics, from a German University” (110). “His studies, at a previous period of his life, have made him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day” (108). Chillingworth has also had “studies in alchemy” (67). On the contrary, Dimmesdale is “a young clergyman, who had come from one of the great English universities” (62). Because Dimmesdale is well educated about the “outward forms of religious life,” he is sometimes referred to as a “heaven-ordained apostle” (109).
The two male characters have undergone some drastic changes. Throughout Chillingworth’s life, he has been “calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affection” (117). He has “undergone a remarkable change”, there now is “something ugly and evil in his face” (116). On the other hand, Dimmesdale’s health has “begun to fail.”(109). Even though Dimmesdale’s “form has grown emaciated”, he still has a “devotion to study” (109).
After the...