Scarlet Letter Symbolism of Darkness

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(Hawthorne 175). This scaffold is the same one that Hester Prynne had stood on at the very beginning of the book, only this time it is Dimmesdale who is standing on it, and it is the middle of the book. On the way to the platform, Hawthorne states, “walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot that, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy” (Hawthorne 175). In this context Hawthorne uses a literal and figurative meaning of this quote. Dimmesdale is walking in a literal dream. He reaches the scaffold and starts to see the townspeople come out, and Hester and Pearl join him on the scaffold, which they never do. It is a dream that he deems as something he can’t do, because than he would be revealing his secret to the town and he does not want to do that in the slightest. The figurative is the opposite. This dream that he has to walk in the shadow of, is the dream of his secret being revealed. That he does not have to lie, but he does not want to risk it so he stays in the shadows where this secret is attached to him and he lives this lie. He can not come out of the shadows, until the sun changes positions, or rather the people can see him in a new light. One that shows a different side of him, which would be the truth.

Now when it comes to Roger Chillingworth, he is the darkness of this story. He makes everything that is bad even worse, because he is so consumed in revenge on the man Hester committed her sin with. The first real introduction we get to Chillingworth and his intentions is when he visits Hester in the jail, after her shaming on the scaffold. Hawthorne uses Roger Chillingworth’s “dark and self-relying intelligen[t]” (Hawthorne 87) smile to create a factor of pure evil. This smile of Chillingworth’s haunts Hester multiple times throughout the story as she sees his whole demeanor change, “how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen” (Hawthorne 132). How Hawthorne describes Chillingworth at the governor’s house here makes the reader envision how much he has let himself go. Chillingworth does not care about his looks anymore, or himself at all for that matter. He lets himself fall into the hands of evil by dedicating the rest of his life to causing the father of Pearl pain and torture. So thus he begins his investigation on Dimmesdale. Since he has Dimmesdale’s trust in the first place he spends his time searching and studying Dimmesdale “like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern” (146). He is going to dangerous depths to try and find this secret which he knows the minister holds, so much so that he could lose it all with one mistake, just as a treasure-seeker could. During Dimmesdale’s vigil he sees Chillingworth with an evil expression on his face. “So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister’s perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated” (Hawthorne 186). The idea that Hawthorne is trying to pass here, is that Chillingworth has become the full face of evil of this point. Even though he is in the complete darkness and shadows, one can still see his expressions of evil, due to the fact that the darkness is one and the same as himself. When Hester goes to talk to Chillingworth about revealing him as her husband to Dimmesdale, Hawthorne uses this as an opportunity for Hester to truly see what he has become. “It seemed to be his [Chillingworth’s] wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively, that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it” (Hawthorne 203). Chillingworth knows that he is a “fiend at [Dimmesdale’s] elbow” (Hawthorne 205) and he tries to hide it. He is not proud of what he has become, yet he can not help but let himself become it. We can tell this from how when he talks “his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom” (Hawthorne 206). This is one of the only times that Hawthorne uses this symbol in terms of sadness in Chillingworth. He is still human, and he still has feelings, but he has lost himself in the darkness which his soul has become, and he knows he can not go back from it.

The Forest is a completely different environment for Hester, because this is where she stands out and she can feel comfortable. The Forest is described as “black and dense,” but for Hester it “disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to [her] mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering” (Hawthorne 220). Hester’s mind has been a black full of dark thoughts about herself and it was so filled that she never knew what to think about next, and now she is in the forest, which is the real-life personification of her mind. Hawthorne even uses Pearl as an example that Hester is only miserable in the town. Hawthorne compares Pearl to the brook, that she “resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom” (Hawthorne 224). Simply meaning that Pearl had been through misery due to her mother, but she then refuses to let the stream kill her enjoyment of nature. When Dimmesdale appears in the forest, he does not, at first, recognize Hester, but once he does “they glided back into the shadow of the woods” (Hawthorne 228). Hawthorne’s use of the word “glided” makes the reader get a sense that it was easy for them to back into the shadow together, that it was right, and it was because they were comfortable being alone with their sin. When they were together, their sin does not seem as bad as it does where there is no shadow to accept it. Even after Hester admits to who Chillingworth truly is, they relish in knowing that they have each other, and they have Pearl, and it seemed to them that “no golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest” (Hawthorne 235). The forest has become a place for Hester and Dimmesdale to be themselves, and even in the darkness that this forest brings, they experience the best moment of truth to each other.

Hawthorne has a way of using these symbols in various ways, and through various people in The Scarlet Letter, but he does this, so that the reader can grasp an understanding for the powerful, various meanings of these symbols. Shadows and darkness is one of the symbols he uses more than the others, and he associates it a lot of the time with its opposite, light and sunshine. Only so the reader can comprehend that light is what the townspeople consider good, and, in a sense, Hester