The scarlet letter, help?

Question

so i know this is summer reading and i should be doing this myself but i can not understand this book. ive been reading both sparknotes and the book, i still don't get it. i figured someone on this site has read this book a couple times.

sooo,

what reason is given for Dimmesdale's ability to touch the souls of others?

im stuck on that question.

Answer 1

I have not read The Scarlet Letter, but there are a number of on line study guides, and quite a few other resources on the Internet that can help you with this novel.  Most of them have good information.  Have a look at these sites, and you should get some help with your work.  If you do a search here in the Yahoo Answers search window you will find additional help because hundreds of questions have been asked here about The Scarlet Letter.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/li...

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/scarlet/

http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/t...

http://www.studyguide.org/scarlet_letter...

Answer 2

I would have to say that his ability to touch the souls of others comes from his mere understanding of people. He was able to in a sense of speaking relate to the sinner, he had pent up sins himself and was capable of "walking in their shoes."  Reverend Dimmesdale was capable of being in two worlds at once, as in he was a sinner, and a pure heart. Although to him he was just a sinner. Also he felt that he should attempt to do as much goos as he could for people, he figured if he could not confess his sin he would attempt to do as much purity for the world as he could, kind of like how he lashed himself to try to purify his heart and filter out the bad.

Answer 3

I confess I've only read this once, so I am no expert. However, I believe it was Arthur Dimmesdale's tormenting guilt that gave him an understanding of human frailty as well as a lack of condemning attitude towards others. His knowledge about how easy it was for even a minister to cave in to temptation made him less judgmental, too. This understanding made Dimmesdale more gentle when reaching out a helping hand to others or when counselling people. This compassion and lack of judgment would cause people to love and trust him.

Another thing about Dimmesdale was that he seemed to truly love both God and man. The truth of this coupled with his compassion would touch almost the hardest of hearts.

That's my opinion of the matter.