The different strands of his character are
"intertwined in an inextricable knot." His is a living soul,
complicated and varying in its moods, but ever pursued by a sense
of sin. By one of Hawthorne's swift, uncanny flashes of insight,
as Dimmesdale goes home after the forest-meeting, we hear nothing
of the wild beatings of hope and dreary revulsions to despair,
but only of foul, grotesque temptations that assail him, just as
earlier--on the pillory--it is the grim humour and not the
frightful shame of the situation that strikes him, when by an odd
trick of his imagination he suddenly pictures a "whole tribe of
decorous personages starting into view with the disorder of a
nightmare in their aspects," to look upon their minister.
Hawthorne's delineation of character and motive is as
scrupulously accurate and scientific as Godwin's, but there is
none of Godwin's inhumanity in his attitude. His complete
understanding of human weakness makes pity superfluous and
undignified. He pronounces no judgment and offers no plea for
mercy. His instinct is to present the story as it appeared
through the eyes of those who enacted the drama or who witnessed
it. Stern and inexorable as one of his own witch-judging
ancestors, Hawthorne foils the lovers' plan of escape across the
sea, lets the minister die as soon as he has made the revelation
that gives him his one moment of victory, and in the conclusion
brings Hester back to take up her long-forsaken symbol of shame.
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