The Scarlet Letter: Dimmersdale is a Coward and a Hypocrite "But (Hester) is not the protagonist; the chief actor, and the tragedy of The Scarlet Letter is not her tragedy, but Dimmesdales. He it was whom the sorrows of death encompassed_.. His public confession is one of the noblest climaxes of tragic literature." This statement by Randall Stewart does not contain the same ideas that I believed were contained within The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I, on the contrary to Stewart's statement, think Dimmesdale is a coward and a hypocrite. Worse, he is a self-confessed coward and hypocrite. He knows what he has to do to st