Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter as an example of pride. His creation of Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, and his selflessness were the moral behind keeping her alive. The characters in The Scarlet Letter are nothing more than symbols that represent abstract qualities and are superfluous. Names play an important role in The Scarlet Letter: it is Hawthorne's way of distinguishing not only characters but their personalities. The latter is the most important if one considers Hawthorne's characters as abstract symbols. Dimmesdale is particularly noted for his dark nature in hiding his association with Hester's Scarlet Letter. His extreme selfishness and pride blind him to what the Bible has taught him and in this respect he is as one-dimensional a character as the Puritans are. “Who but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen to death, overcome with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne stood!” (Hawthorne 139). His extreme fear of someone finding out his secret and losing 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 is reminiscent of Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home, and Esther of the Old Testament, a woman who intercedes for her people and who is often considered an image of inner strength combined with beauty” (Pennell 83). Each character is abstractly represented differently; Pearl as nature, Chillingworth as pure evil, Hester as altruism, and Dimmesdale as pride. Roger Chillingworth's expression had been calm, thoughtful, scholarly. Now there was something ugly and evil in his face ” (Hawthorne 117) Hawthorne is still manipulating the characters to fit the exemplum The easiest way to understand that the characters are actually a symbol is to take into consideration 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 made not so much of flesh and blood as of moonlight and abstract qualities" (Gorman 7). Characters are simply eliminated when their purpose has been achieved. When Dimmesdale confesses his sins on the gallows, the pride element of his character leaves so Hawthorne kills him. "The law which I have broken - the sin here terribly revealed! - let these alone be in your thoughts... God knows; and He is merciful! He has shown His mercy, above all, in my afflictions... I had lacking either of these agonies, I was lost forever! Praise be to His name! (Hawthorne 233).