As the Reverend Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold in this
third scene with the place of ignominy for the Puritans, he calls to Hester and Pearl,
his family. Although his face is ghastly, there is something "strangely triumphant in
it." Hester, impelled by "inevitable fate," draws near against her will, but pauses
before she reaches Dimmesdale. Just then, the Satanic Roger Chillingworth appears like
the devil "to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do." Catching the minister
by the arm, he urges the minister to
"Wave back that woman! Cast off
this child. All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! I
can yet save you! Would you bring infamy on your sacred
profession?"
"Ha, tempter!
Methinks thou art too late!" answered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but
firmly. "Thy power is not what it was! With God's help, I shall escape thee
now!"
Extending
his hand to Hester, Dimmesdale tells her that the old man opposes him "with all his own
might, and the fiend's...Support me up yonder scaffold." As the minister confesses his
sin to the public, Chillingworth bemoans, "Thou has escaped
me!" and Dimmesdale tells him,"May God forgive thee!
...thou, too, hast deeply sinned!"
This, of
course, is the climax of Hawthorne's novel as the Reverend Dimmesdale reveals his secret
sin and clears his tortured conscience. With the peace in which Dimmesdale perishes,
the theme of Hawthorne is illustrated. It is the hypocrisy of the Puritan who feels he
must hide his sin for fear of ignominy and ostracism that damages his soul and body. In
his last chapter, Hawthorne states his theme which Dimmesdale has thus
demonstrated:
Among many morals which press upon us from the
poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence: "Be true! Be
true! Be true! Sow freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the
worst may be inferred!"
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