The Rev. Dimmesdale keeps many vigils throughout the
course of these seven years covered in The Scarlet Letter. We hear
about them once, and then he heads to the scaffold in the middle of the night. I assume
it's this event to which you're referring. Arthur feels the need to do more
penance--more than fasting and keeping vigils and whipping himself bloody with a
scourge.
He is tormented by guilt, and one night he goes to
the scaffold. Many momentous things happen that night, as I'm sure you know--Arthur
brings Hester and Pearl with him on the scaffold; Hester is struck by how weak and
fragile he appears to be; Pearl asks him to stand with them in the daylight, and he
refuses; Roger sees them but pretends he doesn't know the import of their being there
together; a scarlet A is seen in the sky; a beloved governor
dies.
In the morning, on a Sunday when everyone was
gathering for church, Arthur's glove is found on the scaffold by a parishioner. The
effect is as might be predicted--no one assumes the pastor they adore has been on the
scaffold; instead they assume Satan is up to his old tricks, so to speak, trying to make
a man of God look bad. Next time, says the parishioner with a laugh, the Reverend will
just have to fight the devil with his bare hands.
If you're
referring simply to the vigils--a prolonged period of prayer and watching, with no
sleeping--they are making him weak. The weaker he gets, though, the closer the people
think he is to heaven.
Either way. the effect on his
career, then, is that he is even more revered by his "flock."
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