Lesson's Learned

      The Scarlet Letter has taught me a lot about life, but most importantly it has taught me how to deal with guilt and sin.  Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays two extreme situations; you can be a "Hester" and bare your sin to the world or be a "Dimesdale" and bury your sin until it devours everything, leaving just a shell behind. 

        Some may see Dimesdale's journey as overly dramatized because they themselves can't understand why someone would die as a result. But think about it, (hopefully) very few of us have committed adultery, nonetheless as a minister. If you were in Dimesdale’s shoes would you have acted any differently? Of course as humans we immediately see ourselves in Hester, the “saint”.  We want to be strong and let everyone know our darkest sins without as much as a wink.  The funny thing is, is that we are all “Dimesdales” at heart.  We all keep secrets even though it may relieve us if we tell.  We all cover sins so that we are accepted in our religion, friendships, and society. If only we all just understood that our world would be so much more accepting if there were no secrets. In the end, Dimesdale realizes that if he had not been a coward and stood on the scaffold seven years before, his life would have been more meaningful. We all need to apply this realization to our own lives because it is better to have died once then to “die a living death daily”.