I will give you some ideas about the question specific to
the text in The Scarlet Letter for you to apply the Stephen Toulmin
style of argumentation.
First, I believe Dimmesdale is the
guiltiest and Hawthorne being the author is not a character in the story. He is
guiltiest of letting the community find Hester at fault for so long taking the blame by
herself when he was an equal party to her crime.
This
applies to the real world because out of wedlock pregnancies are frequent in a society
like ours and because the male never has the baby, he rarely bears the burden of shame
that women suffer.
As for pathos, logos, and ethos, let us
first address logos. Dimmsdale being a reverend drew the correct conclusion that should
his crime have been discovered, he might have lost his position. The people would not
have respected a man who had a child out of wedlock in Puritan culture and his sin would
have been made public, an issue for everyone to deal
with.
As far as for his pathos, or emotional side, we watch
the young minister squirm and endure the pain quietly for a great part of the book. It's
almost as if he wants to take away Hester's pain, but he know the cost to him would be
greater and deals with his shame privately, but it ages him quickly. He is being eaten
up from the inside out by his guilt.
The ethos relates to
his pathos because I think he wants to do the right thing, but can't for the price in
his life he will have to pay.
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