Arthur Dimmesdale's Downfall

Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne’s minister, suffers the greatest burden in the novel. Little does the congregation know that he had an affair with Hester. Instead of admitting his sinful act, he keeps it secret. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, this secretive sin brings Arthur Dimmesdale physical, emotional, and spiritual burdens. Arthur Dimmesdale inflicts a physical burden upon himself with self-loathing and torture. He takes Puritan fasting to an extreme by starving himself “....rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance” (136). Dimmesdale uses fasting to purify his body of sin. As he continues to fast, he feels no better about what he did. After many years, Hester Prynne notices Dimmesdale’s
Walking through town, he sees a new church member but instead of speaking to her he “— with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained—he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might” (209). Instead of greeting the new church member, he runs past her, so he will not hurt her innocence. By running away, he makes her feel like she has done something wrong. After scurrying past the newest member of the church he starts to get feeling a temptation so terrible that, “It was— we blush to tell it—it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk” (210). The devil is spiritually burdening him with a temptation to take away young children’s innocence. By stopping himself from teaching the children naughty words, you see that he is in a battle within himself between good and evil. Arthur Dimmesdale was tempted all the way through town, even though he struggled not to fall into temptation, he did not do the immoral actions the devil wanted him