Guilt is something that weighs heavily on the human soul. It incorporates itself in our dreams, our thoughts, and our actions. Everywhere we turn, it stares us blankly in the face. While it is unbearable to suffer, guilt is an emotion that reaffirms our humanity. Repentance of a particular guilt, being spiritual, physical or both, is evidence that we are beyond the baseness of our animal tendencies. This fact has not gone unnoticed to the many great figures of literature. They have explored the sentiments of guilt and repentance by exploiting the conscience of flawed characters. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne presented to the world Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, a man suffering in a past sin. Likewise, in his play The Crucible, the great modern playwright, Arthur Miller, penned the character of John Proctor to allegorize the dangers of moral passivity. Their guilt and repentance were the primary causes of their “undoing”.
Dimmesdale and Proctor were both martyrs to their sin. More specifically, they were both martyrs to the sin of adultery. Being a man of the cloth, this was especially painful for Dimmesdale. How could “a ruined soul like [his] effect toward the redemption of other souls?” (Hawthorne 182). As he confessed so mournfully to Hester, his partner in sin, “Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up in my pulpit and meet so many eyes turned up to my as if the light of heaven were beaming from it…and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize?”(Hawthorne 182). He was so consumed by his hypocrisy that he turned to self-masochism as a means of escape. In stark contrast to Hester’s outward manifestation of the “scarlet letter”, Dimmesdale carved the letter onto his chest. He would therefore be able to suffer alongside Hester instead of being just a silent accomplice. However, this penance was not enough. The only way he could truly out the pestilence that had been eating away his soul was to publicly proclaim his guilt. To him, “nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code in that interior kingdom was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated.”(Hawthorne 205). When he acknowledged Pearl as his own during the Election Day speech, he shone a little light into the darkness of his guilt. Sadly, even in this moment of revelation, the sin that had become his cross for seven long years finally ended his life. While pain and shame had been merely earthly penances, death was the final judge.
