The Minister's Anguish Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is a compelling story which explores the inner emotions of the human mind, spirit, and the heart. Set around the 1640s in a Boston Puritan society, it focuses on the moral issue revolving around the virtue of truth and the evil of secret sin. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, a man of profound knowledge of religion and a true devotee of God, commits a crime of passion with the …showed first 75 words of 1417 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1417 total…his sin and die a peaceful death on the scaffold where the whole ordeal had began. Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Dimmesdale as a frail human being who is able to overcome a lot of agony with the strength of truth. The clergyman's life and death leaves us an important moral to remember: " Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred! " (242).