Chillingworth: A Hidden Monstrosity Summoned by Hate
797 Words3 Pages
A dark figure of a man watches from the background as a serene Puritan village cast their eyes upon the adulterer and her child being publicly punished. His dark, cold and divisive eyes flicker to the adulterer, the woman whom he calls his wife and devices an utter plan of cold, ghastly revenge with the motive of pure destruction. Chillingworth; a character devised from the intelligent mind of Nathaniel Hawthorne is a symbol of the evolution of one whose mind is obsessed with the revenge of others. In the Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth is quite the odd one. Escaping from an Indian village where he was once held captive, Chillingworth returns to the village, only to be greeted by the sight of his wife being publicly shamed for the sin of adultery. Chillingworth, gravely distorted by the news, seeks revenge against his wife and her secret lover. As shown in Chillingworth, the contrived desire for revenge against others reveals a hidden monstrosity. Chillingworth’s bitterness, jealousy and guiltiness eventually become a contrived desire for revenge. In particular, his bitterness against his unfaithful wife, his jealousy of her love for someone else and the guiltiness of not being a proficient husband leads to the demise of his character. The revulsion stored deep in the corridors of his heart twist and maul his character that he goes from being an intelligent individual to a grand manipulator. His twisted, deformed shoulders only mirror the twisted deformity that rests