Sin And Guilt In The Scarlet Letter

A Sign for Sin
Throughout The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the effects of sin and guilt on the mind, body, and soul of Hester and Dimmesdale are revealed through imagery and symbolism. Hester and Dimmesdale are living in the tormented realm of social stigma inflicted by carrying around sin and guilt in different ways. For example, in The Scarlet Letter, Hester remains beautiful and composed on the outside throughout her punishment, while her body and poker face are not affected. Dimmesdale suffers from the effects of his sin in his mind and his body, but it is most crushing to his soul. Dimmesdale suffers the most from the effects of guilt due to the fact he has no social blow-off valve. He is forced to sit and suffer in his own self-torment.
She seems to be able to live with her sin and accept her punishment. While the community wishes to mark her for her sin visibly and physically, Hester finds a loop hole and turns her sin into a dangerous beauty. She wears the letter as both a punishment and a statement, “On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A” (Hawthorne 6). Hester makes the mark of her sin something different and more complex than Puritan hazing, the letter is just as beautiful as it is shameful. Represented by the decoration of the letter, her body and appearance do not reflect the burden of her sin. Hester does not think of her sin the same way her society does and thus she does not physically convey the marks of her guilt aside from the ornate letter. Although she strives to remain strong in the face of such public ridicule and contempt, inside she is suffering. Hester pushes through many long days, “throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion” (Hawthorne 32). Hester recognizes that she has become a living lesson and this weighs on her. She
He can never free himself from the mental effects of his sin as he thinks about it incessantly and even incorporates his feelings into his sermons. Like Hester, he is constantly struggling with his own thoughts. Dimmesdale is seen clutching his chest throughout the novel and it is made clear that he too bares a letter upon his chest. At the end, physically, his body begins to show the effects of sin as he grows weaker. “His form grew more emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any sight alarm or sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain” (Hawthorne 71). While this is a physical manifestation of his guilt and inner turmoil, the fact that he grows thinner is significant because it is symbolic of his soul being tortured as well. His soul is being drained and he considers it corrupt because of his sin. The fact that Dimmesdale dies at the end of the story makes it clear that he was suffering far more than Hester.
Sin has always been and will always be a part of human life and literature. Some will hide it, some will embrace it, and some will rot from it. Hester and Dimmesdale are two examples of the effects of sin on the human soul. No matter how the sin is handled or dealt with, it will always leave it's mark. In The Scarlet Letter, the letter