Chapter 17: The Pastor and His Parishioner
NARRATOR: As Dimmesdale walked close to her, at first Hester couldn’t find her voice
to call out to him.
HESTER: Arthur Dimmesdale! Arthur Dimmesdale!
NARRATOR: Dimmesdale looked around, and at first thought Hester was a ghost under
the tree. But then he saw the scarlet letter.
DIMMESDALE: Hester? Is that you? Are you alive?
HESTER: Yes, if you call my last seven years “life”. How about you? Are you alive?
NARRATOR: They stared at each other as if neither could believe the other was there,
both of them thinking all the way back to the joy that had been their first meeting. They
seemed so separate and far from each other until Dimmesdale reached out and took
Hester’s cold hand in his own. Without speaking, they went off the path into the forest,
and sat down with each other on a mossy log. At first they began to talk about the
weather and other trivial things, until they remembered how to talk to each other again.
DIMMESDALE: Hester, have you found peace?
HESTER (looking down at the scarlet letter): Have you?
DIMMESDALE: No. I have nothing but despair. I wish I were an atheist, because all of
God’s gifts are now just more ways to torture me. I’m miserable.
HESTER: But the people love you.
DIMMESDALE: Which makes me more miserable. If I were doing a good job, and
actually teaching them something about sin, they would look up at me and see that I’m
the worst of sinners. I’ve laughed at the contrast between who I am and what I sound like,
and Satan laughs too.
HESTER: You are too hard on yourself with this. You have repented very deeply for
what you did. Isn’t there anything good that you’ve done that will make up for the sin?
Anything that will let you be at peace?
DIMMESDALE: No, Hester, it doesn’t work! Anything good I do is cold and dead! I
should have just told the truth years ago and stopped being a minister. You’re so much
happier in public humiliation than I am in secret. This conversation has been the best one
I’ve had in years, because I’m talking to someone who knows who I really am. I wish I
just had one friend like you, who I could really talk to about this. But I don’t, and it’s
awful.
HESTER: Well, in me, you not only have a friend, but someone to cry over the same sin
with you, as I was your partner in it.
NARRATOR: The next part was hard to say, but Hester struggled with it, then found the
words.
HESTER: You have an enemy living under your own roof.
DIMMESDALE: Whatchu talking about?
NARRATOR: Hester was not aware of the great harm she had done to Dimmesdale in
letting this go on so long. The thing was, when this all started, she was suffering so much
herself, and she imagined that he was suffering the same kind of thing, and that he sort of
deserved it – it was she, after all, who had to wear the scarlet letter, while he had nothing.
But with Chillingworth around, interfering, with his official title of doctor, poisoning
everything – Hester knew what Chillingworth was, and yet had not spoken up. She felt
that death would have been better than having done this to the man she so passionately
loved – and that she would rather have died at Dimmesdale’s feet than tell him what she
had done.
HESTER: Oh, Arthur! In everything else, I have tried to tell the truth. I consented to one
lie – but it was a big one, and it has ruined us both. The old man, Chillingworth – he was
my husband!
NARRATOR: Dimmesdale, such a mess after years of suffering, seemed to sink down
even lower.
DIMMESDALE: I should have known it. Because there was something about him that
always made me kind of sick. This is why I feel so bad – because all of my pain and guilt
was exposed to the one person who would gloat over it! I can’t forgive you!
HESTER: Let God punish me! Please forgive me!
NARRATOR: Hester threw her arms around him and would not let go, even though his
cheek was on the scarlet letter. She had taken all sorts of crap from the townspeople and
looked right back at them, but she could not stand to see an unforgiving frown on the face
of the man she had loved.
HESTER: Won’t you forgive me? Won’t you? Won’t you forgive me?
DIMMESDALE: All right, I forgive you. We aren’t the worst sinners, Hester – that old
man is worse than us both. He has destroyed that beautiful thing we once had, and you
and I never did that.
HESTER: No, we didn’t. What we did had a sacredness all its own. Do you remember?
We both felt it, and told each other so at the time.
DIMMESDALE: Yeah, I remember. We were awesome together.
NARRATOR: It was getting darker, but they still sat there, at peace with each other as
only they could be. Here, in the forest, the scarlet letter didn’t need to burn Hester’s chest
and brand her as a whore. Here, Arthur Dimmesdale wasn’t living a lie, and could be true
to her.
DIMMESDALE: I just thought of something. Chillingworth knows you’re going to tell
me who he is. Is he going to tell our secret to the town?
HESTER: IDK. He has this thing with being secretive. I don’t think he’ll tell; I think he’ll
find other ways to get revenge.
DIMMESDALE: I can’t keep living with this guy! What should I do?
HESTER (beginning to cry): You’re such a mess! And so weak!
DIMMESDALE: I know it. But you are strong – help me decide what to do!
HESTER: Why don’t you leave? Go somewhere far from here and start over! Or go
across the sea, back home to England, to a little village where no one knows anything
about us.
DIMMESDALE: I can’t – I feel like quitting means giving up the repentance I’ve already
done.
HESTER: Come on, do you really think that the only test for you in life was this one, and
you failed it? There might be many more tests to come that you will pass. Preach! Write!
DO SOMETHING! Do anything but lie down and die. Give up the name of Arthur
Dimmesdale and make for yourself a name you can be proud of! It is still in you to do it.
DIMMESDALE: Oh, Hester – you’re trying to get a man with no feet to run a race.
There is nothing left in me to go into the world alone! I’d have to go alone, and I can’t.
HESTER (whispering): You won’t go alone.
NARRATOR: And now everything was said between them.
Chapter 18: A Flood of Sunshine
NARRATOR: Hester had spent so many years as an outcast that she had learned from it.
Despair, solitude, and shame had been her teachers. The minister was different. He had
had to go among people. His was a sin of passion, so it wasn’t his actions he had to
monitor, controlling himself was easy enough – it was his emotions. For Hester, those
seven years of suffering had been preparation for this moment. For the minister, he had
seen himself as on a long path of hell from which there was no exit, and suddenly he
realized that there was someone on him with it, and it gave him hope for the first time in
years. He decided to leave, and leave with Hester.
DIMMESDALE (thinking): Maybe Hester is right, and God will forgive me not by
staying here and suffering, but by going and living a better life. The other thing is – I
don’t think I can live without Hester anymore.
NARRATOR: For the first time, there was some joy in Dimmesdale’s troubled heart.
DIMMESDALE: I already feel better, with this decision made. Why didn’t we do this
before?
HESTER: We’ve suffered enough in the past, let’s not look back at it. Look, I’ll take off
the scarlet letter, and leave the past behind.
NARRATOR: She unpinned it, and let it flutter to the ground, and so felt a huge relief of
the shame lifting from her shoulders. The forest itself seem to get brighter and happier,
even that crabby little brook sounded happy again, as these two people found each other
again, and happiness in doing so.
HESTER: You have to get to know Pearl! She’s a weird kid, but you’ll love her, and can
tell me how to deal with her.
DIMMESDALE: I’ve been afraid of kids, because of this. But – you think I’ll love her,
and she’ll love me?
HESTER: Definitely. I’ll call her over.
NARRATOR: Pearl was standing in a flood of sunshine, not too far off. She had
decorated herself in leaves and flowers, and went back to her mother slowly – slowly,
because she saw her mother was with the minister.