Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter as an example of pride. His creation of Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, and her selflessness were the morals that kept her alive. The characters in The Scarlet Letter are nothing more than symbols representing abstract qualities and are useless. Names play an important role in The Scarlet Letter: it is Hawthorne's way of distinguishing not only characters but also their personalities. This last point is the most important when considering Hawthorne's characters as abstract symbols. Dimmesdale is particularly known for his dark nature of hiding his association with Hester's Scarlet Letter. His extreme selfishness and pride blind him from what the Bible taught him, and in this aspect he is a one-dimensional character, as the Puritans are. “Who but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood!” (Hawthorne 139). His extreme fear that someone will discover his secret and lose his high status is just one of the ways Hawthorne manipulates the characters to make the novel more didactic rather than stream-of-consciousness. “Hester remembers Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home, and Esther of the Old Testament, a woman who intercedes for her people and is often seen as an image of inner strength associated with beauty” (Pennell 83). Each character is represented abstractly differently; Pearl as nature, Chillingworth as pure evil, Hester as selflessness, and Dimmesdale as pride. Roger Chillingworth's expression...had been calm, meditative, scholarly. Now there was something ugly and evil in his face” (Hawthorne 117). Hawthorne again manipulates the characters to fit the example. The simplest way to understand that characters are in fact a symbol is to consider the amount of themes, symbols, and motifs that Hawthorne incorporates into his novels. "The book is a moving series of symbols within a larger symbol from beginning to end... It is true that these characters are arbitrary manifestations of specific impulses... They are not so much flesh and blood as they are moonlight and abstract qualities. » (Gorman 7). Characters are simply eliminated when their objective has been achieved. When Dimmesdale confesses his sins on the scaffold, the element of pride in his character leaves and Hawthorne kills him. "'The law we have broken, the sin here fearfully revealed!' --let this alone be in your thoughts... God knows; and he is merciful! He proved his mercy, above all, in my afflictions... Had Without any of these sufferings, I was lost forever! Praise be to his name! His will be done! » (Hawthorne) 233).