Is it better to confess your sins or to hide them from society?
I remember that when I was a kid, I'd never tell my parents the bad things I did, even when it was super obvious. For example, I once tried to make myself a hot dog (not Jeannette Walls style--I was just microwaving one) and when I put the hot dog on my plate, didn't realize how hot it was and accidentally dropped the plate. Now, I figured that my parents wouldn't notice if I swept up the broken plate into a corner and covered it with a paper towel. Obviously, they found out, and I confessed to it all immediately. Being 6 years old, it was kind of hard to hold in a secret for that long.
In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale faces a similar dilemma, except his secret is a lot easier to hide than mine. However, his also comes with a much deeper sense of guilt; after living with it for 7 years, he "longed to speak out from his own pulpit...and tell the people what he was" (Hawthorne 139-140). It brings about the question: is it better to admit your sins or refuse to acknowledge them? Personally, I' think it's fine to tell the occasional white lie (don't lie, everyone does it), but when it comes to the big stuff, just admit the truth. However, the way Dimmesdale dealt with this problem annoyed me. Seriously, he spent 7 years debating on whether to tell his sin or not. He could have just decided at the beginning to confess--if he didn't want to, he could go on through life without any intent to tell society his sins and without any of the guilt that accompanied him. I mean, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when Harry finds out about the first task, you don't see him debating on whether to tell Dumbledore or not--he decides to keep it a secret and use the information to his advantage (admittedly, Harry's secret is a lot less intense than Dimmesdale's). Instead, Dimmesdale chose to debate over this issue for a very long period of time, which probably contributed to the damage to his body. Basically, Dimmesdale's predicament taught me that when it comes to revealing your sins, despite your final decision, don't spend an extraordinarily long amount of time making your choice; it'll only end up hurting you. This is a pretty obvious statement, so it's kind of annoying that it took Dimmesdale so long to realize.
I remember that when I was a kid, I'd never tell my parents the bad things I did, even when it was super obvious. For example, I once tried to make myself a hot dog (not Jeannette Walls style--I was just microwaving one) and when I put the hot dog on my plate, didn't realize how hot it was and accidentally dropped the plate. Now, I figured that my parents wouldn't notice if I swept up the broken plate into a corner and covered it with a paper towel. Obviously, they found out, and I confessed to it all immediately. Being 6 years old, it was kind of hard to hold in a secret for that long.
This is (almost) exactly what happened to me.
In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale faces a similar dilemma, except his secret is a lot easier to hide than mine. However, his also comes with a much deeper sense of guilt; after living with it for 7 years, he "longed to speak out from his own pulpit...and tell the people what he was" (Hawthorne 139-140). It brings about the question: is it better to admit your sins or refuse to acknowledge them? Personally, I' think it's fine to tell the occasional white lie (don't lie, everyone does it), but when it comes to the big stuff, just admit the truth. However, the way Dimmesdale dealt with this problem annoyed me. Seriously, he spent 7 years debating on whether to tell his sin or not. He could have just decided at the beginning to confess--if he didn't want to, he could go on through life without any intent to tell society his sins and without any of the guilt that accompanied him. I mean, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when Harry finds out about the first task, you don't see him debating on whether to tell Dumbledore or not--he decides to keep it a secret and use the information to his advantage (admittedly, Harry's secret is a lot less intense than Dimmesdale's). Instead, Dimmesdale chose to debate over this issue for a very long period of time, which probably contributed to the damage to his body. Basically, Dimmesdale's predicament taught me that when it comes to revealing your sins, despite your final decision, don't spend an extraordinarily long amount of time making your choice; it'll only end up hurting you. This is a pretty obvious statement, so it's kind of annoying that it took Dimmesdale so long to realize.
You're not the only one who's annoyed at Dimmesdale...that guy has got some serious decision making issues. Even when finally confesses his sin, after going through all that pain and debating for so long, the best he can do is just drop dead. I agree that if he just made his decision upfront, he could have saved himself a lot of pain.
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