Secrets

Reading Chapters 18-20, the one thing that really stood out for me was the brook. The brook serves as a symbol of a heart that has been overwhelmed with secrets and can no longer keep them. Hawthorne describes the brook as having “gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help but talking about it.” While in the woods, Pearl notices the babble of the brook and even wonders what it is saying. “What does this sad little brook say, mother?” The brook is where Hester and Dimmesdale openly discuss their secrets, and so the brook becomes the keeper of their secrets. In a way, the brook symbolizes Dimmesdale’s heart and how it has become so damaged by the secrets and sins that he hides from the world.  The difference between the brook and Dimmesdale is that the brook is honest and reveals the truth as it is. Hawthorne describes the brook as flowing “over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves,” having huge rocks that “covered over with gray lichens,” and even having “eddies and black depths at some point.” Dimmesdale, on the other hand, shields his secrets in his sermons to the townspeople. The Puritans, however, are unable to recognize what Dimmesdale is hiding. Therefore, the brook acts as a contrast to Dimmesdale’s heart and also portrays a barrier that exists between the recognizable and unrecognizable.

So here is a little poem I wrote about the secrets that Dimmesdale keeps:

Roots lingered underneath

glossed with grime

Unable to breathe

Unable to climb

Above the murky mess

perched a fine flower

an unwrinkled dress

an unpolluted river

But a curious fellow

saw in the flower something sly

so he dug below

and unveiled a lie