The Conscience's Roll in Dealing with Guilt and Shame
             What power the conscience holds, as it can, will bring a person to his doom. Throughout the novel, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the main characters, Reverend Dimmesdale, expresses his feeling of guilt best by his action. The story evolves around Hester Prynne, the Sinner of Adultery, and her everyday life with her daughter, Pearl. Hester Prynne was sent to live in Boston, by her husband, but has not been seen for two years and is thought to be dead. Hester moves on and has an affair, with whom is a mystery, and along comes Pearl. Hester is punished on the scaffold and the lover never confesses. Hester's sworn secret to her lover's identity is the essence of Dimmesdale's guilt. The significance of the three scaffold scenes shows Dimmesdale's change from weak to strong.
             During the first scaffold scene, Hester is publicly humiliated. She is openly punished to the public, for her sin of Adultery. She is ordered to wear a scarlet letter "A" on the bosom of her clothes for her entire life, and she is to serve three hours of scaffold time, being tortured through embarrassment and humiliation. In this particular scene, Dimmesdale has control of his guilt to the point where he can handle it, by his nonchalant attitude and intrigue to find out who Hester's lover is. Being the pastor, Dimmesdale is asked by Rev. Wilson to talk to Hester. Using this as an opportunity to try and get Hester to confess his sin for him, Dimmesdale asks for a public confession of her lover's name. Keeping her secret, Hester announces that Pearl's father is of a heavenly figure. " I will not speak! Any my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never known an earthly one!" (P 47). The conspiracy of Hester and her lover's relationship and her kept secret, add to the guilt Dimmesdale has. Dimmesdale's guilt continues ...