Birdman or (Dimmesdale Finally Grows a Backbone)

Hawthorne ends his novel the same way he begins it: at the marketplace. This time, the Puritans are celebrating the inculcation of a new governor by throwing the wildest parade they can muster, which turns out to be a pretty solemn event. Meanwhile, Dimmesdale is delivering an energetic sermon about the relationship between God and man’s communities. Dimmesdale seems to use up all of his remaining life force on this sermon: Hawthorne does his best to paint Dimmesdale after his speech as a corpse just waiting to fall over, signifying that his time is soon; the burden of his sin is too great. Sensing this, Dimmesdale beckons Hester and Pearl to join him atop the scaffold so that they can exist as a family if just for a brief moment in time. Of course, Chillingworth wouldn’t be Chillingworth if he didn’t find a way to ruin the moment, and so he emerges from the crowd and calls for Dimmesdale to abandon Hester in his final moments, that he might not “perish in dishonor” (225). Dimmesdale, actually showing a backbone for once, retorts, saying, “Methinks thou are too late!” (225). This line is crucial to Dimmesdale’s integrity as a character: for one thing, Hawthorne lets him do something besides begging for Hester’s strength like a four-year-old asking his Mom if he can have a toy from the toy store. For another, Dimmesdale finds it in himself to accept that he has sinned, and as soon as he is able to do so, he finds the strength which he has begged Hester for within himself. He removes the bandage covering his chest in front of the entire Puritan community and announces both to his people and to God that he is in fact the Monica Lewinsky to Hester’s Bill Clinton. Once Dimmesdale has openly admitted his own sin, the evil is sucked out of Chillingworth, and he is left on his knees, repeating, “Thou hast escaped me!” Dimmesdale asks that God forgive Chillingworth, himself and Hester, and then dies.

Hawthorne then brings us quite some time into the future, after Chillingworth has kindly left Pearl a great deal of property before passing away himself. Not surprisingly, Pearl’s social status is elevated immediately. Hawthorne goes so far as to say that her people’s forgiveness would allow her to marry even the purest of the Puritans, although the language used in describing her actual fate is intentionally vague and suggests that she never married. We’re then told that Hester Prynne has returned to Salem and now spends her days giving her counsel to others, mostly women, in need of her strength. Finally, Hawthorne shows us the shared gravesite of Hester and Dimmesdale, engraved “On a field, sable, the Letter A, gules” (235). Sable refers to a very dark black, and gules refer to the color red, so the whole epitaph means “on a field of black, the letter A in scarlet.” Thus, Hawthorne wraps up his novel in a pretty bow.

Now, Mr. Mahoney has asked me to stop “dumping on Hawthorne,” so I won’t discuss his blatant declaration of the theme of his own novel. Instead, I’ll discuss a much more ambiguous piece of art with similar themes: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Much like Dimmesdale, this film’s protagonist Riggan Thomson is haunted by his past. Riggan spends the entire film desperately trying to separate himself from his role in the fictional comic book film Birdman. As he does this, he is relentlessly tortured by some kind of malevolent force whom we later find out is a manifestation of his own psyche.

Riggin tormenting himself.

Similarly, Dimmesdale is tortured by Chillingworth for most of The Scarlet Letter, but once he is able to master his own psyche and admit to the world that he has sinned, Chillingworth’s torturous powers disappear. Both works end with the main male characters giving a powerful public performance. In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale gives a rousing sermon so strong that it kills him. In Birdman, Riggin faces the realization that he will never achieve his Platonic conception of himself, and so he makes an attempt to kill himself onstage. Only after these public displays of passion can these men connect to their families. Riggin’s daughter is only willing to forgive him for his horrible parenting after his attempted suicide, and Pearl is only willing to kiss Dimmesdale after he has publicly cleansed himself of his sin. In the end, both men seem to die satisfied and glorious deaths, as well. After his original suicide attempt fails, Riggin jumps out of his hospital window. We then see his daughter rush to the window and gaze up at the sky, smiling, as if Riggan has finally risen above his past as he always wanted to. Dimmesdale finds peace in death as well. “Praised be His [God’s] name! His will be done! Farewell!” Dimmesdale faces death with an eery alacrity, having cleared his name to his society and to his Heavenly Father. In the end, both men’s lives symbolize the messages that Hawthorn and Iñárritu fight so hard to get across: with acceptance of the self comes peace.