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Theme Of Secrecy In The Scarlet Letter

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Imagine living in a world where all sins are viewed as equal, this is the society of the Puritans, where people received the same punishment for murder as they would for theft. In The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is affected by the secret of his adultery with Hester Prynne, that he must keep hidden. This secrecy has affected Dimmesdale, from him having a mental break down and punishing himself to him constantly being weak and lethargic. Overall, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, presents the negative impact of secrecy on the physical and spiritual state of the character Arthur Dimmesdale, who is forced by society to keep his secret hidden.
Throughout The Scarlet Letter, the self punishment Dimmesdale performs is used to engrave into the audience the negative effect of secrecy. Dimmesdale has a constant inner turmoil between the fact that he really needs to reveal his secret …show more content…
This one secret results in Dimmesdale’s complete mental breakdown. During this break down, Dimmesdale would feel very guilty for his sin because he is unable to speak out about what he did, therefore,”This Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the while”(136). This shows that this secrecy is causing his mind to constantly be in conflict because he must keep such a big secret for multiple years and this then results in him deciding to punish himself for the secret sin by whipping himself. He punishes himself because he not only feels guilty for not standing by Hester throughout her punishment, but also because he has added on to her punishment by not wanting the secret revealed. Although the end result of this breakdown is physical, the overall cause are his mental issues which stem from the secrecy. Along with this, the secrecy also resulted in Dimmesdale having

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