Chillingworth's Confession

By revealing this small, hidden regret, he exposes Hester’s tortured state of mind. Unable to reach salvation in the town she desired to live in, she regretfully decided to leave and abandon her sorrows. The burden society placed on her with the scarlet letter was too demanding for her to handle any longer. Similarly, Arthur Dimmesdale was distressed from his ignominy. Afraid of societal repercussions, Dimmesdale had been “overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast” (102). Society’s extensive honor toward him exacerbated his pain, thus causing society to trap Dimmesdale; this prevented him from revealing his dark secret and reaching salvation. Additionally, he began to picture his surroundings as an obstacle designed to hinder his path to redemption. His shortcoming to reach salvation agonized Dimmesdale to the point where he was incapable of recalling “[any] text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immorality of

Even though Hester’s sin is the one the book is titled after and centered around, it is not nearly the worst sin committed. Hester learns from her sin, and grows strong, a direct result of her punishment. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. “ Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made her strong... “ Hester also deceived Dimmesdale, also committing the sin of deception. She swore to Chillingworth that she would keep their marriage a secret. She even withheld this from Dimmesdale, whom she truly loved. Hester finally insisted on telling Dimmesdale and clearing her conscience. In this passage, you can see how he grows angry at Hester: “O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!--the indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!”  Dimmesdale does forgive Hester. She has done

He finds out it was Dimmesdale and then set out to torture him. “[Chillingworth] never set him free again until he has done all it’s bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart” (Hawthorne 117). Hester tells Chillingworth to stop, but Chillingworth does not. He wants to get revenge on Dimmesdale. Because of this revenge, he loses Hester forever. Chillingworth tortures him in his own best interest. He is selfish. He wants Hester, even though Hester no longer loves him. Even after he has the chance to learn his lesson, Chillingworth still acts in his own interest. He learns that Dimmesdale and Hester are going to leave on a boat, and he books a ticket on the same boat, causing more problems for Hester and Dimmesdale. Chillingworth wants only what was in his own best interest, not what is better for others.

At first Hester, agrees to Chillingworth’s terms to keep his real identity a secret. This in return hurt Dimmesdale, her secret lover. She does not stand up to Chillingworth out of fear of the chain effect of damage it would cause. Hester says, “I will keep thy secret, as I have his”, which in essence shows her weakness towards a male. Yet, at the end of the book, she recognizes that she must “do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom [Chillingworth] had so evidently set his gripe”. She comes to the conclusion that hiding Chillingworth’s secret does not help Dimmesdale like she hopes, but in fact, hurts him further. The fact that she realizes this, though, displays her to be an devoted and loyal person. These qualities display many things a female, main character, in those times, did not have much opportunity to play, especially in the role of which Hester plays it.

Not being honest has its serious lethal consequences internally and causes confusion in the heart of who a person really is under the lies. In the novel, Dimmesdale is not only deceiving others by hiding the truth but is also deceiving himself which leads to him having inner confusion of his true nature. Hester and Dimmesdale are in the forest going over their plans to run away when

Dimmesdale brings out the nature and the good aspect of Hester and Chillingworth brings out the evil. Dimmesdale is a kind person who just wants to do the right thing but doesn't have the courage to confess to his crime. Chapter 12 "Then, and there, before the judgment seat, they mother, and thou, and I, must stand together. " In the book it take Dimmesdale a long amount of time before he is actually able to confess to what he has done and he doesn't even do it in public.

However he is too weak and cowardly to confess, so he thrusts the responsibility to reveal him on Hester. He asks her “to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer!...Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin?”(Hawthorne 70) In this quote, Dimmesdale does not only demonstrate the weakness he feels and his fear of confessing, but also his desire to confess. These conflicting emotions only serve to increase his guilt, but he is not yet willing to confess himself. Thus, he is not only imploring Hester to confess for him, but also describing his emotions in the process. He clearly believes that confessing is preferable to living in guilt and that hiding is only making him a hypocrite, especially due to his status in the Puritan community. However, he still does not confess. While Hester at the time is on a platform in front of the town, surrounded by light and the sight of the other Puritans with her secrets exposed, Dimmesdale is not in the spotlight. He still has his secret hidden and is seen as admirable by the people. His refusal to confess could be due

Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne debates whether under Puritan beliefs if someone is saved and forgiven for their sins or not forgiven. Members of society argue and decide the fate of sinners depending on the severity of the sin and their general feelings and thoughts of a sinner, yet, hypocritically, claim their decision as God’s will. Roger Chillingworth, best representing “Satan”, is not forgiven for his sins, despite willing all his wealth and belongings to Pearl, representing “Conscience.”

In this passage fits into the novel of adding to the plot line and character development due to the fact it plays on the theme of blame. Dimmesdale is really trying to get it through Hester’s head that he wants the blame where it belongs. He believes the blame need to be on him. However, she for some reason she refuses to place it on him. You can’t help but just wonder why? Why in the world would she let it get to this where it doesn’t matter if the right person shall get blamed? Is there some sort of reason why she wants to protect him? Is she trying to prove a point? Is it worth it when you are probably the most hated in community from

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the readers are able to notice how a single sin is capable of destroying three perfectly good lives. Chillingworth, Hester, and Dimmesdale are all guilty of submitting to, anger, and ambition, causing all to qualify as a sinner. Chillingworth’s sinfulness ways put him higher up than Hester and Dimmesdale on the scale of their evil acts. From the instant Chillingworth is introduced, he is dishonest with the Puritan society. Chillingworth is portrayed as though he doesn't know any kind of thing that may have gone on at scaffold. He asks one of the puritans: “…who is this woman? – and wherefore is she here to set up to public shame?” (Hawthorne 67). We learn in the following chapter that he does however

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended” (Ian McEwan). The novel, “ Scarlet Letter” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, plays an important role in exploring the process of tearing and restoring of the character’s souls. The passage from chapter ten of the “Scarlet Letter”, serves as the climax of the novel as Hawthorne periodically reveals the steps Chillingworth takes while he is searching Dimmesdale's soul for a confession. Hawthorne creates prolonged suspense throughout the passage by using precise imagery, illustrative simile, and a hellish hyperbole. Hawthorne writes in a cynical tone in order to get the audience to sympathize with Dimmesdale and feel resentful towards Chillingworth and his actions.

Hester Prynne is pleading to Chillingworth to return to his old self, from before the sin took place. Chillingworth is believed to have turned into a man without a “human heart” ever since the adulterous act took place, and he has sought vengeance on the man at large. However, Hester tells Chillingworth that he should not seek vengeance on Dimmesdale because there will not be a beneficial outcome for either party. In addition, Hester ask Chillingworth if he will reject the possibility of being rewarded from God if he pardons or forgives Dimmesdale. In my opinion, Hester asking Chillingworth to forgive and to avoid seeking revenge is cruel and is not her place to ask such a thing, because she has taken so much away from him such as his dignity,

As said some time recently, Dimmesdale is Hester's partner, and due to their fleeting issue, at first, it is indistinct if their affection remained. Despite the fact that what is clear is that they both had duties to each other, "here was the iron connection of common wrongdoing, which neither her nor she could break. Like every single other tie, it carried alongside it its commitments" (109). On various events Dimmesdale typically connects his hand and helps Hester somehow. On one event, while Hester remained among the platform, Dimmesdale influences the town "higher-ups" to end her indictment, by talking on her benefit (48). Dimmesdale additionally helps Hester in the Senator's manor when he avoids Pearl, Hester's little girl, from being taken away (78). The priest puts himself at stake to ensure Hester, and consequently, Hester enables him to bear seven years of agony physically and rationally. Besides, Dimmesdale's agony can be partitioned into two segments, the first being simply the torment exacted by the declared Specialist Roger Chillingworth, who wrongfully cures Dimmesdale with the goal of looking for reprisal on the priest, which is raised to Dimmesdale in section 16, "The Forrest Walk" (125). Second, by the hopelessness he felt after his addresses, and his profoundly covered feelings

Hester Prynne’s ability to sustain her stability and strength of spirit is the express result of her public guilt and penance. She was Arthur Dimmesdale’s partner in adultery, but she is used by Hawthorne as a complete foil to his situation. Unlike Dimmesdale, Hester is both strong and honest. Walking out of prison at the beginning of the novel, she decides that she must “sustain and carry” her burden forward “by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink with it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief” (54). Hester openly acknowledges her sin to the public, and always wears her scarlet letter A. In the forest scene, she explains to Dimmesdale that she has been truthful in all things except in revealing his part in her pregnancy. “A lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side” (133). Even Dimmesdale himself realizes that Hester’s situation is much healthier than his own when he states, “It must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart” (92-93). This life of public shame and repentance, although bitter, lonely, and difficult, helps Hester retain her true identity while Dimmesdale seems to be losing his.

Realizing his horrid thoughts, Dimmesdale claimed to have “yielded himself with a deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was a deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt even while the frightened him…[His old] self was gone! Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge.” (152-153) Following this conversation with himself, Roger Chillingworth enters Dimmesdale’s study in hopes of administering more “aid” in preparation for his upcoming Election Sermon. Dimmesdale respectfully declines his offer, but Chillingworth persists. Suspicious, the narrator describes Chillingworth’s reaction: “All this time, Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in man’s knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The physician knew, then, that, in the minister’s regard, he was no longer a trust friend, but his bitterest enemy.” (153) Chillingworth realizes that Hester broke their vow and that DImmesdale