Two Truths and a Lie: An analysis of the Scaffold as a symbol in The Scarlet Letter
Two truths and a lie have been a common team-building exercise used for various types of collaborative groups. The purpose of the activity is for people to get to know each other in a fun way, by deciphering what is truthful and what is fictional about some fun facts they have shared about themselves. It always proves to be both comical and telling. It becomes easy to spot who is an excellent liar, and who is honest. This game can quickly become an integral piece in one's first impression. Who would think that this innocent game could potentially have long-term negative effects on someone’s career or reputation? The main characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter experienced their own version of this game, but it was far from innocent, and it continuously took place on the scaffold, in front of the entire Puritan community. They “played” this game for years and it had a negative effect on everyone. Lies became truths at the expense of others' reputations. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold is used as a symbol of infinite truth and sacrifice through the development of the characters.
The three scaffold scenes are pivotal in steering the story of The Scarlet Letter. Several critics have recognized the three scenes as essential to the structure of the novel, its form, and its meaning (Pinsker). The scaffold is the nexus of the occurrences in the narration as it appears in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. On the first day of her summoning, Hester appears unperturbed as she stands on the scaffold, but then her inner thoughts and emotions are tumultuous and wild. But Hester has prepared herself for this scene where she had “fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely…” (Hawthorne). As Hester stands at the scaffold, she is confronted by her true identity. She recalls her happy and innocent childhood, remembers the man she had married, and recalls her new life in Massachusetts. It finally dawns on her on this first public display that she is indeed the subject of scorn and ridicule. She acknowledges, in her mind, that “Yes!—these were her realities—all else had vanished!” (Hawthorne). Hester realizes that she is no longer the sheltered young woman with a promising future. She is an adulteress, as the letter ‘A’ on her bosom screams, and the child she holds in her arms is the outward testament of her affair.
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After the grave realization, Hester neither hides from the crowd nor shows any remorse. In fact, she seems to embrace their criticism and judgment. Accepting the judgment of the crowd gives Hester the ability to scan above the multitude of faces and is shocked when she notices her estranged husband Roger Chillingworth. She recognizes him even though “he had endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne, that one of this man’s shoulders rose above the other” (Hawthorne). Chillingworth proceeds to gesture to Hester, with a finger over his lips, telling her to stay silent. At this moment, Hester realizes that she is alone. She dreads meeting with her husband. So afraid is she of him that “she fled for refuge, as it were, to public exposure, and dreaded the moment when it should be taken away from her” (Hawthorne). When the trial to find out the father of her child begins, Hester is caught up between her husband and her lover (Arthur Dimmesdale, the young pastor), who both want to know the father of her child. On the scaffold, Hester decides to hide the identity of her bastard child’s father because she realizes that she is doomed either way. If she identified Arthur Dimmesdale as her lover and father of the child they had conceived out of wedlock, Dimmesdale would lose his stature as leader of his congregation.
Hester cannot bear to publicly humiliate Dimmesdale as she is still in love with him. There was also the risk that Chillingworth would kill Dimmesdale for corrupting his wife and Hester on realizing this chose to keep her silence. Pearl recognizes her father’s voice when Dimmesdale pleads with Hester to expose her lover. Hester notices how the child “held up its little arms, with a half-pleased, half plaintive murmur” (Hawthorne). This is Pearl’s way of beseeching Dimmesdale to recognize her and chin up to the crime (Wellborn). When Dimmesdale remains silent, Hester realizes that she has to sacrifice herself to protect him from the crowd and from Chillingworth, who showed utter determination to find the man who had impregnated his wife. When Hester and her child return to prison after a day spent at the scaffold, Chillingworth visits her in the capacity of a physician. Husband and wife reveal some uncomfortable truths to each other. Chillingworth admits that he corrupted Hester by marrying her when he knew he would never make her happy. Hester admits that she had never loved Chillingworth (Hawthorne). Both reach a consensus; they will act as if they do not know each other. The scaffold, therefore, heralds the end of Hester’s and Chillingworth’s marriage, and the sacrifice Chillingworth makes. He pushes his feelings towards Hester’s adulterous ways to the back burner, in order to reveal to the community who Hester’s lover is so she does not have to bare this burden alone. It reveals that their marriage had been dead long before they decided to move to Massachusetts; it had been a loveless marriage.
The second scene at the scaffold becomes the epitome of torment for Arthur Dimmesdale when he ascends it. Driven by the guilt of being Hester’s unknown lover and the father of their bastard child, he ascends the scaffold in the night. However, the scene makes clear several facts. The first is that Dimmesdale is not ready to own up to his crime as an adulterer. When Pearl asks him if he will stand with her and her mother at the scaffold the next day at noon, Dimmesdale counteracts that “Not then, Pearl…but another time” (Hawthorne). The second is that Chillingworth is causing Dimmesdale dread and pain. When Dimmesdale spots Chillingworth in the distance, he admits to Hester that “I have a nameless horror of the man” (Hawthorne). Chillingworth is accomplishing his promise to Hester, he is haunting the man who had been her lover. Dimmesdale’s refusal to climb the scaffold with Pearl and Hester the next day is also proof of his renunciation of Hester as his lover and mother to his illegitimate child (Elbert). Moreover, Dimmesdale’s choice to be led away by Chillingworth is a final blow of truth to Hester. The very act attests to the truth that Dimmesdale has chosen Chillingworth as a more worthy companion than Hester (Elbert). The final truth revealed at the scaffold is the gnawing guilt that is tearing away at Dimmesdale’s heart. While on the scaffold, Dimmesdale undergoes a moment of hysteria when he begins to laugh hysterically as he imagines the shock of the town if they realized that he had fathered the bastard Pearl. He pictures the shock on the townspeople’s faces as they realized that he was not as perfect as they deemed him to be. He is not ready to face their judgment, so he takes to the scaffold at night as a means of lessening his guilt, but even while there he realizes that he is not ready to be shamed publicly for his sin.
Hawthorne portrays the third and last scaffold scene in an uncanny way. After giving the best sermon of his life, Dimmesdale ascends the scaffold with the help of Hester and their daughter Pearl. A range of emotions seizes the people; shock, surprise, and utter denial, as they watch their beloved pastor ascend the scaffold, a victim of public shame. In broad daylight, Dimmesdale sacrifices himself to the public with the intention of freeing Hester and Pearl from their status as social pariahs. He strives to make amends for abandoning them seven years earlier. Dying on the scaffold serves as penance for his sin; the sin of hypocrisy and abandonment of his family. The scaffold is also a moment of truth for the Puritans for it proves to them that even the people they perceived as holy and incapable of sin could be as sinful as the rest of them. Dimmesdale was their most trusted community member, their moral compass, yet he dies on the scaffold, publicly shamed for the vile crime of adultery. Chillingworth is also impacted by this final climactic scene. When he perceives the death of Dimmesdale, he goes into hysterical denial, repeating “though hast escaped me!” (Hawthorne) like a deranged maniac. It finally dawns on Chillingworth that he could not punish a man who had deeply subjected himself to punishment. The scaffold, therefore, becomes the place where Chillingworth’s dream of exacting vengeance on Dimmesdale gets quashed, leaving him unhinged and deprived of the chance to impact punishment on the man he had plotted to hurt for so long. It is a moment of reckoning for Chillingworth; all his cool calculating was all for naught, he had sacrificed his soul but had nothing to show for it. After this scene, Chillingworth fades into nothingness, a man who has lost virtually everything.
In conclusion, the scaffold carries profound meaning in The Scarlet Letter. It is the hinge on which the story turns. It has been the sole source of the development of the characters. Hester is the shunned adulteress, but she accepts her fate as a social pariah on the very first day that she is publicly shamed at the scaffold, with the letter ‘A’ on her dress. Throughout the novel, she develops into a strong woman who fills in the role of both mother and father to her daughter. She is a woman who has been knocked to the ground but has refused to stay down. Her daughter Pearl, once a symbol of Hester’s shame, becomes her symbol of strength. Pearl grows to be a charming child, despite the taint of the scaffold that she has borne since her infantry. However, Hester and Pearl are the only ones who show positive growth in spite of the connotation of the scaffold that haunts their lives. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth degenerate into their worst selves. Dimmesdale succumbs to the gnawing guilt within him. He is drawn to the scaffold because to him, it is the only source of redemption. When he lays himself bare as an adulterer and Hester’s lover before the Puritan crowd, he feels not the shame of the scaffold, but the freedom it grants his burdened soul. Chillingworth loses his soul because of the scaffold. He spends years plotting his vengeance on Dimmesdale for sleeping with his wife, but his greatest wish is never fulfilled after Dimmesdale dies on the scaffold. Deprived of his life’s sole purpose, he fades into oblivion. The Scarlet Letter opens and closes on the scaffold.
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