The Scarlet Letter Dialectical Journal

ENTRY 4 : ( CH 12-14)

Type of quote Quote Significance

Theme –dHidden sin can cause

unnecessary guilt and can eat away at a person’s soul

Hawthorne describes how Dimmensdale think when he is at the scaffold where 7- years ago Hester was there and be punished publicly alone.”He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him every where , and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back with her tremulous gripe , just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclose”(p.144)

Symbolism-Meteor

Hawthorne describe the meaning of the meteor to Dimmensdale’s guilt .”Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point ,burning duskily through a veil of cloud ;but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it ;or; at least ,with so little definiteness ,that another’s guilt might have seen another symbol in it “ (p.151)

t

Symbolism-Chillingworth (cold –

hearted)

Hawthorne describe how much Chillingworth has changed- he becomes more devil then before :”In a world , old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil , if he will only , for a reasonable space of time , undertake a devil’s office(p-166)

Use of sin and guilt

The feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither , yet continually did one thing or another ,which intertwined ,in the same inextricable knot , the agony of heaven –defying guilty and vain repetance