In the mid-nineteenth century, particularly in the American colonies, a new philosophical movement known as Transcendentalism flourished. A number of famous writers of the time, including the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne, believed in the emerging faith. They eschewed traditional religion, perhaps as a natural reflexive movement that rejected the overbearing efforts of the Calvinists and Puritans who arrived in the colonies in the previous two centuries, and instead embraced the natural world and looked primarily to it for guidance. They viewed the clergy with suspicion and preferred to think that worldly objects were equally suited to providing enlightenment. Transcendentalists viewed everyday objects as microcosms of the world or even the universe and modified their behavior accordingly. How does Nathaniel Hawthorne's belief in Transcendentalism influence the main characters in the book? Dimmesdale is a weak man who cannot survive on his own. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, as is revealed early in the narrative, is a gentle pastor with a talent for writing moving and vibrant speeches for every Sunday mass. Sermon on the wages of sin and the merits of penitential confessions; yet who could know better than the recalcitrant priest himself? Every time he stands in the pulpit, he feels as if his continued reticence about his own guilt will kill him. He wanders around the city as if clinging to life by a thin shred, even going so far as to keep one hand on his chest. Ultimately, Dimmesdale's secret is his undoing, and Hawthorne intentionally characterizes him this way. He agrees to confess his transgression in front of his congregation only when his passes...... center of the paper...... novel something akin to a transcendentalist allegory. Hawthorne's rather veiled claim is that the coldly calculated world of medicine and the stoically fixed orthodoxy of organized religion ultimately merge at the turn of Transcendentalism. In simpler terms, the minister (representing the religion) is morally lax and spiritually too weak to confess his misdeeds. The doctor (representing the world of supposedly incontrovertible facts) is evil and corrupt, and his medicine cannot compensate for unhealthy spirituality. Hester (representing the Transcendentalists) commits a youthful indiscretion, but refuses to let the judgments of her equally flawed peers interfere with her interests. Do not be fooled by the plausibility of other philosophies, Hawthorne seems to argue in The Scarlet Letter, lest the fate of Dimmesdale and Chillingworth befall you too..