Wednesday, August 10, 2011

What are some quotes in the book that show Dimmsdale's and Chillingworth's declining physical condition in The Scarlet Letter?

Chapter 12 and Chapter
13



Hester




Dimmesdale




Chillingworth




Even
the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be partly
owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in
her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had
either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it
ever once gushed into the sunshine
(148)




as if the universe were gazing
at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very
truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily
pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud;
an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to
another,(135)




Roger Chillingworth
have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there, with a smile and scowl, to
claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister’s perception of
it (142)




Much of the marble coldness
of Hester’s impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned
(148)




the minister discovered, by the
faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible
anxiety; although his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of
lurid playfulness.
(137)







.
It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there
seemed to be no longer any thing in Hester’s face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in
Hester’s form, though majestic and statue-like, that Passion would ever dream of
clasping in its embrace; nothing in Hester’s bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of
Affection. (148)




He felt his limbs
growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he
should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break, and find him
there.(137)







And
there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the
embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom
(140)




Whom, but the Reverend Arthur
Dimmesdale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester
Prynne had stood!
(138)











His
nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish
weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties
retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease
only could have given
them.(144)










The
minister felt for the child’s other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there
came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a
torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the
child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid
system.(139)

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