Arthur Dimmesdale's Suffering In Scarlet Letter

What could tear a minister from his high place in society down into a pool of his own blood, whipping himself for a seven-year guilt? In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the story of Minister Arthur Dimmesdale, who, following a scandalous act of adultery, struggles to hide his wrongdoing from the public eye each day. As Dimmesdale watches Hester Prynne and the pairs’ child suffer through each day, he remains God’s voice to the people, while in secret, a guilty and broken man. Arthur Dimmesdale’s past sin fatally poisons him which proves that deadly guilt harms not only the guilty person but those close to him as well.
Dimmesdale’s consistent denial of his sin protects him from public judgment but ultimately proves worse for his soul. As Hester stands upon the scaffold, treading water in a sea of disparaging Puritan faces, her

As a penance for his wrongdoing, Dimmesdale takes to a secret closet in which he brutally scourges his body, “laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much more the pitilessly because of that bitter laugh” (136). Dimmesdale’s self-torture proves to be his only outlet for his pent-up frustration and self-loathing. As a Puritan minister, Dimmesdale’s times spent brutalizing himself are his only times of complete truthfulness in his horrid life. In addition, Roger begins carving away at Dimmesdale’s morale “like a sexton delving into a grave, perhaps in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom” (121). The minister’s closest thing to a friend skulks in secret as an evil creature, fueled by a vengeful rage and desire to destroy him. Dimmesdale’s obliviousness to Roger’s true identity secures a sicker future for himself and only furthers his self-destruction. Surrounded by misery, Dimmesdale finds himself backed into a corner of guilt and pain from which he cannot