Why is the Minister on the scaffold?

Finally, election day. The day that occurs but once a year, a day to celebrate. The festivities have been on going here in Boston since the wee hours of the morning. A band plays loudly in the town square and the crowd is joyous and loud. I can barely even hear myself think under the great tumultuous cloud of noise that bursts forth from the square.  I am standing toward the center of the crowd, the bodies press and sway amongst each other; a living wave of humanity. The sun gleams down in the most pleasant of ways amongst my company and a light breeze graces our warmed bodies. The day is new and good, this will surely be a good day. Very soon Minister Dimmesdale will climb the scaffold that is erected quite far from me and deliver this year’s election day sermon.

I am quite concerned about the Minister. He appears to be in failing health, and he has been for a number of years. There is some rumor that Doctor Chillingworth is some sort of catalyst behind this, but I find that doubtful. Speak of the devil, there is the Doctor now.

Chillingworth just pushed past me, hurriedly moving in the direction of the scaffold (225). I turn my direction to the scaffold and it appears as though I missed the Minister climbing it. The Doctor continues to push through the crowd, no doubt to talk to the Minister. The Doctor finally caught up to Dimmesdale and now they are talking. I cannot hear much because the band continues to play, but the Imp child of Mrs. Prynne embraces the Minister. Mrs. Prynne has also mounted the scaffold now. How very odd. The men closer to the scaffold, mostly men of the clergy, look very disturbed as Dimmesdale continues to talk. The band music has now slowly come to a halt and all eyes in Boston are fixed upon the edifice. Although the music has subsided, I still struggle to hear the Minister speak, but I know that it must be important. He holds Mrs. Prynne’s hand in his right hand and Pearl’s in the other. He most obviously must be announcing something appalling, our other leaders certainly look beside themselves (227).

“PEOPLE OF NEW ENGLAND!” shrieks the minister. Finally, I can hear his voice piercing through the ambient crowd sound. He begins to speak again with power, just as a cart rolls behind me. The rumbling is so loud that his voice is drowned out again. Much to my annoyance, I cannot hear him as he steps forward without assistance of his cane, and declares something important once again. I glare at the cart operator and turn my attention back to the scaffold.

And just as I do the minister rips off his cloak and ministerial band, and reveals “it” to the crowd (228).

Even at a distance I could see the a letter ‘A’ inscribed into his pale chest. It shone out, crimson like a freshly opened wound. It was so carved into his skin that its very shape is still carved into the forefront of my memory. The multitude Some of my fellow countrymen disagree with what the Minister revealed. Some maintain that there was nothing there, that he had just imagined it in his time of delusion and guilt. But I know what I saw. He was the accomplice in creating the Imp. And the Minister at that! Whatever he did (or did not) have on his chest, changed the entire town’s outlook on him. He was guilty. But so was Hester, and most of us knew the too as very good, God-fearing Puritans.

We all Sin that is for sure. And his Sin seemed to kill him. In the moments after he made his “Revelation”, fitting because it is the book of end times, the Minister collapsed and shortly died. I know not whether it was guilt or the freeing of his burden that killed him as some suggest, but I do believe that the cause may have been something much more sinister.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.