Chapters 20 & 21

This was a very confusing section for me. Dimmesdale began acting extremely odd. Dimmesdale is on his way home and he begins having a multitude of corruptive thoughts. He meets an old woman in the street and he wants to tell her blasphemous statements of the immortality of the human soul. However, he restrains himself. Dimmesdale next meets a young woman who has recently joined his church. He ignores her because he is afraid that he will tell her some horrible corruptive thought. He also meets a group of children and is tempted to teach them some curse words. I believe he is behaving in this way because he has realized the own mortality of his foul. He sees things in a different light and now knows that he is a sinner just like anyone else. Being a minister does not change the human tendency to sin.
Hester and Pearl attend the ceremony. Pearl is flitting around behaving like her normal self. I think that Hester is anxious because following Dimmesdale’s speech they plan to leave for Europe. However, her anxiousness is transformed to dread and terror when she learns from a sailor that Chillingsworth plans to accompany the family to Europe. She now knows that she will never escape from him.