Reverend Dimmesdale Is a Sinner

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Arthur Dimmesdale has continually suffered because of the sin he has committed. He is tortured by his only friend who is really his enemy. He grows weaker day by day because he will not confess his sin. He starves himself and whips himself. He has a daughter but no one can know. People look up to him and he does not want to let them down. If only people knew that he committed adultery with Hester Prynne. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter, the author writes, “While standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr.Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at the scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain” (page 139). Nathaniel Hawthorne shows Dimmesdale's struggle with his sin through his relationships with Roger Chillingworth, Hester Prynne, and Pearl and also through the harm he commits on himself.
Arthur Dimmesdale has become friends with his worst enemy though he does not know it until close to the e...

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