Free Essay - Rev. Arthur Dimmesdales Double-talk in The Scarlet Letter :: Scarlet Letter essays

Dimmesdales Double-talk in The flushed Letter     Abstract Critics of Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter are wrong to delegate to Hester the means of persuading Dimmesdale to elope with her and their child. It is Dimmesdale who uses his rhetorical mastery to talk Hester into talking him into eloping. An psychoanalysis of his conversation with Hester in the wood in comparison with his sermons shows that he is development the same discursive strategy he employs to convince his parishioners that he is a fumbleless man.   The Reverend Mister Arthur Dimmesdale is usually understood to be guilty of 2 sins, one of commission (his adultery with Hester) and one of omission (his cowardly and hypocritical failure to confess). This is his state through most of The Scarlet Letter scarce when Dimmesdale meets Hester in the forest (Chapters 16-19), he agrees to flee Boston with her, to seek kayoed a new life in the Old World, and, presumably, to live with her in adultery. By the lights of his community and his profession, this resolution is a far more sombre sin than all he had committed to date, hardly most critics gestate agreed that Dimmesdale is not primarily responsible for his actions in the forest. Both Michael Colacurcio and Terence Martin take aim written that Hester seduced Dimmesdale in the forest,(2) and Darrel Abel argues that Dimmesdale could not resist Hester, for in entering the forest Hester means to persuade Dimmesdale to elope with her and Pearl, and Dimmesdale agrees to the elopement after only a wobbly show of conscience.(3)   The forest scene is crucial in the narrative of The Scarlet Letter, and a proper understanding of what happens in the forest is necessary for any interpretation of Dimmesdales last days of life and his final confession. I will argue in this paper that the reading of the forest scene sketched preceding(prenominal) is mistaken that in fact it is Arthur Dimmesdale and not Hester Prynne who is the activating agent(4) in the forest, increasing Dimmesdales culpability for his most serious fall. Previous critics seem to debate that Dimmesdales much-vaunted skill as a speaker abandons him when he enters the forest with Hester, but I will show that Dimmesdale talks Hester into talking him into fleeing, and so Dimmesdales gravest sin cannot be laid at Hesters feet at all.