We cannot look to our circumstances for reasons to do anything wrong. Dimmesdale is no different from the young boy that grows up in an abusive household beating his wife and claiming that he is not responsible because of his environment. Finally, Dimmesdale's suicide is the ultimate gesture of his weakness. He cannot be honest with those that assume to know him. He claims in these last moments that he withheld his "own heavy sin and miserable agony" (244) and now must let the truth be known. This is a brave move and it would have been even braver to live after confessing. Instead, he takes his own life. Many may assume that he took his own life because of grief and inner turmoil but it makes more sense to assume that he could not live with what he had done and he could not have lived with the kind of life that the truth would have offered him. He was a coward that finally buckled under pressure because a real man would not have left Hester and Pearl alone after what...
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