The Five Stages of Grief, Dimmesdale’s Story

Charles Baker

charlesbbaker

The Scarlet Reader

This post focuses on Dimmesdale and the 5 stages of grief 21-24

The Five Stages of Grief, Dimmesdale’s Story

After reading the way Dimmesdale’s life had ended, I noticed an interesting pattern. t seemed that throughout the story Dimmesdale seemed to follow the five stages of grief. For those of you who do not know, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

In the beginning of the story, Dimmesdale denies that he had any involvement with Hester, and he hides his identity as the father. The second stage is Anger and Dimmesdale feels this mostly on himself. In a previous post I talked about Dimmesdale’s slide into insanity and his self harm practices. He even goes to the point of carving an A on his chest to represent his sin.

The third part of grief is bargaining, which doesn’t really show up. One could assume that Dimmesdale asks god for forgiveness at some point in his ordeal, but this is never stated. His emotional sermons may be his way of paying forward good deeds to replace his old, bad deeds. The fourth stage is depression. This stage appears to be the most apparent, with Dimmesdale clutching his chest and drawing his emotion and putting it in his sermon. His depression is so bad that it is being manifested physically as while. He is a young man, but his health is ailing fast. He is coming closer and closer to death and his doctor Rodger Chillingworth is not helping him. The depression of Dimmesdale lasts most of the story until the end, where Dimmesdale accepts his mistake.

At the end of the story, Dimmesdale shows his A, and is then freed of his physical form. In this Dimmesdale has accepted his sin is part of who he is and is now ready to move on to a new life, refusing to allow himself to be bogged down by the fear of failing. In this, Dimmesdale has entered the fifth stage of grief and he sheds his sinful, physical vestige, and his sole moves on so that he may rest in peace.

Works cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam Dell, 1850. Print.

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.

Where Did All the Money Go?

Hello again! It is interesting to see how far I have come as a writer as this blogging project has progressed. Not only have I grown and matured as a writer, but so have my fellow bloggers in The Scarlet Reader. Unfortunately the Scarlet Letter has ended, so this is going to be my final blog on any more chapters. I would like to examine the reasoning behind Chillingworth’s decision to leave all of his money to Pearl, a girl that he did not bear with Hester. There are many reasons behind the reasoning for this but luckily for us, Hawthorne saved the best for last.

Chillingworth throughout the entire story has been seen as the devil, or an evil that is beyond human belief. Although most of this is true, Chillingworth still has a side of him that has been hidden until the very end of the novel, and this is regret. I believe that Chillingworth realizes that he is close to death so he begins to contemplate on decisions that he has made in the past, which ties in to my second blog post, The Thoughts Before Death. I think that Chillingworth is finally feeling true guilt for what he has done not only to Dimmesdale, but also to Hester and Pearl. This guilt is centered around his years of torturing Dimmesdale, and the years that he spent torturing Hester as well for the acts of brutality towards Dimmesdale. The only way in his mind to get rid of this guilt and cast away all of the horrible things he has done, is to leave all of his money to the one thing that is the reason for all of this, Pearl.

Chillingworth is a wise man, and it is stated and well known by the reader that he is a smart man in the community, so it is no surprise that after all of these years, he is finally realizing the wrong that he has done. He says that he wants to find the man for committing the horrible sin of adultery with his wife, but once he steps back and looks at the larger picture, he sees that he has committed sin as well. Therefore, it is perhaps a combination of guilt, the fear for perishing in Hell, and the final realization that his deeds were, indeed, quite evil that motivates Chillingworth to leave all of his money and properties to Pearl. Chillingworth wants Pearl to prosper and to forget about what has happened in the past and what she and the letter “A” stood for, so by giving her the money, this allows her to try to pursue a better life. This act of kindness and giving is something that Chillingworth hasn’t done in a very long time, but he feels as though this is the only way to cleanse himself of his wrong doings and his sins.

Chillingworth throughout the novel played a very interesting role. At first he was just a man in the crowd, a leach in society, and then in the end he was again a man in the crowd, but was a man that had changed into something evil. At times in our lives, we sometimes forget about the feelings of others and how our words and actions can affect the overall happiness of their character. Sometimes we all need to step back and think about things before they come out of our mouths, because what we say and do in life ultimately defines us as a person. So would you rather be a man like Chillingworth who treated others horribly and then came to the realization that what he was doing was wrong, only because he was dying? Or would you rather live a guilt free, happy life because you are satisfied every day with the way you treat others and the way others treat you?

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

Now Why Would She Go Back?

Name: Paulina Smolinski

WordPress user name: paulinasmolinski

Blog Title: Scarlet Reader

This post focuses on Chapters 21-24

With the end of the novel approaching, I was reading the quite blunt conclusion that Hawthorne provides me. I was quite content with all of the results as they seemed to be coming all along. Dimmesdale’s death was almost inevitable considering the stress and anxiety the poor man had been enduring. One heart can only handle so much. Consequently, Chillingworth’s death was also foreseen considering the leech now has nothing to live off of. Chillingworth’s malice now does not have a direct object on which it can be placed, and he no longer has a reason to live.  I was terribly happy to hear that Pearl was going to scamper off with some aristocratic European and live in a little fairy tale (at least in my mind) after enduring a complex childhood. The little imp basically becomes a princess, so what happens to her queen? Oh, she goes back to the cursed area where she was first condemned because that makes sense. I was a tad annoyed with Hawthorne for trying to make Hester’s ending a poetic one instead of what I believe to be a realistic one. I personally thought that Hester would want to spend the rest of her life with the object of her love, Pearl. Then I took a step back and tried to view Hester the way Hawthorne presents her with this decision.

At this point in time, Hester identifies herself with the scarlet letter. It becomes part of her and the identity of herself that she has been brainwashed to believe. Somewhere inside her, Hester felt the need to “take up her long-forsaken shame” (Hawthorne 233). She wants to fulfill her life through charity in order to constantly work for the debt she believes her soul must pay for her sin. Therefore, she goes back to New England since “here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be here penitence” (Hawthorne 234). Hester was also spreading her charity work by counseling others who are dealing with sorrow. It is here that her soul is content and where she finds “a more real life . . . than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home” (Hawthorne 234).

I found it interesting that Hawthorne mentions that Hester originally imagined herself as a “destined prophetess” who would reveal a new truth that would “establish the whole relation man and women on surer ground of mutual happiness” (Hawthorne 235). This ideology may have also pulled Hester back to the shores of the scarlet letter before she realized that she was mostly likely not pure or wise enough to be such a prophetess. Lastly, Dimmesdale may have something to do with Hester’s return. I like to imagine that she loved him enough that she wanted her final resting place to be right alongside his where they could share the burden of the sin for ages to come.  As “one tombstone served for both”,  I assume that this was her last wish (Hawthorne 235). Overall, after analyzing Hester’s reasoning for traveling back to the land of ignominy I begin to understand the at first incomprehensible actions.

Work Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam Dell, 1850. Print.