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Chillingworth's Demise In The Scarlet Letter

Decent Essays

Paul, Stacie
5 October 2015
Research Paper
Nagelkirk Section #3 Chillingworth’s Demise
The Scarlet Letter is a book full of suffering and shame that causes multiple characters to endure many different types of pain. There are many horrible aches that inflict the main characters in their battles between their hearts and their minds. Although there are several characters who suffer throughout the course of the book, there is one character that one might not consider who endures significantly more misfortune than any other character. The purpose of this paper is to prove that Roger Chillingworth suffers the most throughout the course of The Scarlet Letter through physical suffering, emotional suffering, and the loss of his humanity.
Chillingworth …show more content…

When Chillingworth arrives in New England after two years of being separated from Hester, he sees the woman that he loves standing on the criminal’s scaffold holding a baby. This is when Chillingworth begins to change from a kind, shy, scholarly man to the human form of the devil that one sees at the novel’s finish. Edward Stone states it best when he explains that there were two different Chillingworth’s in the novel saying, “The Chillingworth who visits Hester in her cell at the beginning of The Scarlet Letter is precisely as his wife later says she remembers him: ‘kind, true, just’”(Stone 140). He goes on to explain that he is kind, because when Hester and Pearl were sick after the day on the scaffold, Chillingworth gives them medicine; he is true, because he recognizes that he was wrong for marrying a woman that he knew didn’t love him even though he loved her; he is just because he always admits that is was his fault that their marriage failed (Stone 140). When one cares for another, he or she does everything he or she can to show them his or her love. Chillingworth exemplifies that he loves Hester by being kind, true, and just. But because Hester did not love him (Hawthorne 68), she is unfaithful and commits adultery. This ultimately causes toil for Chillingworth, because he now knows that the women he loved did not love him back. Therefore, he suffers …show more content…

This causes him to suffer emotionally in the struggle of trying to fit into a community as a completely different person. The book does not state when exactly Chillingworth leaves England to be with Hester, but after he arrives in the new world, he is taken captive by Native Americans. After two years of separation, they meet again in the town square with Hester’s shame for all to see. Chillingworth has to make the decision to admit that he is Hester’s husband or to conceal his identity from all of the town. After choosing the latter, he has to completely hide his identity and come up with a new past life and name. Chillingworth tells Hester, “’It may be,’ he replied, ‘because I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman’” (Hawthorne 70). As a new comer, if the town had knowledge that he was the husband of Hester, he would be pitied. Nevertheless, Chillingworth decided that it was better to be unknown than shamed. Thus, he struggles and suffers emotionally in the search for his new

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