Inconcevable truth

            
             "Even thus much of truth would save me! But, now, it is all falsehood! - all emptiness!- all death" Dimmesdale is living a lie, there is no truth in his life. The people are taking him for someone he is not and only Hester really knows the truth behind his shadow. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale have gone against Puritan law and committed the sin of adultery. But unlike Hester, Arthur hid his secret and was not honest with the people of his society or himself. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne the theme of truth has great importance. Even if it affects social status or it leads to revenge, truth is the safest lie. By expressing truth Hester is set free, leaving Dimmesdale and Chillingworth to deteriorate from their falseness.
             Having committed a moral sin with Hester, Dimmesdale holds the truth inside. Being the reverend of the Puritan church, he has moral obligations to be true to the people, yet Dimmesdale decides to keep his sin inside, defying Puritan providence. When he preaches he preaches of sin but by doing so he is a hypocrite. Dimmesdale speaks to Hester, " What can a ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the redemption of other souls?- or a polluted soul towards their purification?" (131 ) His soul is ruined by holding in his secret and he is preaching when he is really a sinner. Due to his untold sin he is dying a living death as his body begins to become pale and weak. Even his enemy, Chillingworth, sees his pain, ". It must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain,., than to cover it all up in his heart" (118). Chillingworth notices that Dimmesdales illness goes beyond common medicine and is deeper like something eating away at his soul. By not letting go of the truth, Dimmesdale is self imprisoned and eventually dies from his guilt.
             When the truth of Hester's sin is revealed it helps her to become stronger. As Hester is standing on the scaffold for the first time, being publically humiliated, her ability to not break down in front of the crowed shows great strength of truth, knowing this is the punishment for her sin.