Heroes. What we celebrate may not actually be worth it.

Hopes and dreams seem to revolve around heroes and idols. People have something to look up to and that is exactly what has been driving progress and development. However, there is a serious downside to valuing an individual as a hero. Heroes, because they are human and therefore flawed, can never truly live up to the image that is consistently expected of them. Heroes are bound to either pretend to be better than they truly are, or suffer due to their fall from grace. Those who worship them view life through black and white lenses. To them, everyone is all good or all bad, and this view keeps them from seeing the truth about anything or anyone. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the ill effects of hero worship in the character of Arthur Dimmesdale. Arthur Dimmesdale is respected by his congregation as a pious man of God. However, Dimmesdale is also the lover of the married Hester Prynne, and therefore guilty of the sin of adultery. He works very hard to keep his relationship to Hester, who is eventually severely punished by her community. The more Dimmesdale leads a double life, wearing "one face to himself, and another to the multitude," the more he deteriorates physically. Hawthorne describes him as emaciated and sickly, and by the end of the novel, when he finally reveals that he is not the hero the community thought he was, the health effects of his double life lead to his death. However, those who worshipped him, even in the end, fail to understand this significant point. The Puritans' strict moral code, a code of recalcitrance and intolerance, makes them incapable of seeing the truth. As Dimmesdale becomes more frail, they believe it is a sign of his sacrifice. As his sermons become more meaningful, they attribute his "gift" to God, when instead his words are inspired by his own inner wrestling with the guilt he feels. The most important misinterpretation comes when Dimmesdale is on the scaffold with Hester, and a meteor seems to make the letter "A" in the sky. Dimmesdale sees it as a sign that he should be wearing the letter with Hester, while the community believes it stands for "Angel." In the end, the Puritans, although they have been given ample evidence to the contrary, still find value in the strict moral code that deems people either saints or sinners. They are stuck in their black and white world that cannot see the truth. Hawthorne has shown us, for over 150 years, that it is not always valuable to hold people as heroes and that it can be dangerous both to the worshipped and the worshipper. If we heed his lesson, seeing shades of gray rather than black and white, we can move a step closer to living in truth.