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
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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
Chillingworth’s desire for revenge for Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter greatly conflicts his moral duty as a self-proclaimed physician in Puritan Boston. This revenge began once Chillingworth suspected Dimmesdale of having intimate relations with Hester, although he never confronted him. Dimmesdale’s physical and mental health began to deteriorate once Chillingworth relentlessly tormented him, conveying the significance behind internal guilt and poor external health. It was also quite ironic how Chillingworth was seen as Dimmesdale’s mentor to the public, and although he was a physician whose friend was in failing health, his credibility was never questioned. This revenge was fueled by the betrayal of Hester, who was Chillingworth’s wife before he claimed a new identity and persona. According to Chillingworth, Dimmesdale could never suffer enough for what he’d done unless he’d faced it publicly, but once he did, Chillingworth had nothing to motivate his devious acts. The repugnant acts committed by Chillingworth claiming to be provoking Dimmesdale’s confession are absolutely influential to his failing health and significance in the book, "Better had he died at once! Never
Both Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale decay internally and externally throughout The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Chillingworth allows revenge to consume his soul, and Dimmesdale is tortured by his hidden guilt. During the novel, a visible change in physical appearance is greatly noticeable, and the characters’ emotional change is even more drastic. Hawthorne uses these characters as an example of the devastating psychological effects of guilt and sin, the novel’s central theme.
Chillingworth will not bear the shame in regards to his unfaithful wife, nor be burdened with supporting and providing for her. He is truly a cruel and twisted man. This unfaithfulness to his wife is not his only shame; he also is responsible for the daily, mental torture of Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale. “She doubted not, that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth, –the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him, –and his authorized interference, as a physician, with the minister’s physical and spiritual infirmities, –that these bad opportunities had been turned into a cruel purpose” (Hawthorne132).
The character of Roger Chillingworth in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter is one of many different faces. Hawthorne changes the character of Chillingworth during different periods of the novel. As Chillingworth's actions and his motives change, so in turn does the reader's opinion of him, which ranges from compassion to antipathy. Hawthorne keeps the character of Chillingworth an enigma, and Hawthorne uses his narrative to shed light on the true feelings of Chillingworth, as well through the good doctor's interaction with other characters, especially Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale. As we watch the plot evolve, and the reader observes Chillingworth's actions,
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.
He was Hester's husband and he never returned to her, which was shamed in the Puritan society. He didn't want anyone knowing his true identity, so he assumed the name Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth is known as the greatest doctor in their town, and in many of the surrounding towns. He lives this life kind of to forget his previous sins and to keep others from finding out. Roger Chillingworth wanted to keep this secret forever and the name he had before "should never more be spoken."(Hawthorn 237). He also disclosed to Hester that he was trying to kill the priest. He described him as being a "miserable priest" (Hawthorn 343) and he tells Hester that he was dying "in the sight of his worst enemy." Hawthorn (344). He is angered that Hester had an affair and had Pearl with Dimmesdale and he seeks the worst revenge possible. These issues progress the piece because they make the it more complicated and the characters, as well. Freud states that people's actions are "influenced by their unconscious" and this is especially true in the Scarlet Letter.
There are drastic events that change people for good and bad throughout everyone's life. In the Gothic Romance, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Roger Chillingworth as an old, deformed, and ugly man married to a beautiful young woman. Although Chillingworth is well and alive, Hester, his wife, thinks he died at sea and is impregnated with Reverend Dimmesdale's child. As Chillingworth comes to this small Puritan town where Hester and Dimmesdale live, the truth of Hester's crime affects him emotionally, physically, and psychologically. These effects begin to portray a change in his character. Chillingworth fails to achieve individuation as a result of his monomania;
Chillingworth stood with Hester Prynne within the confines of the prison, talking with her about how he would go about finding her lover. He says to her,
Physically deformed and mysterious, Roger Chillingworth finally met his wife after being separated from her for almost two years. He showed no great anger towards her and took upon himself some of the accountability saying it was “...my folly and thy weakness,” (Hawthorne 52) which was the cause of Hester's sin. Chillingworth's only feeling was one of revenge towards the man who had been Hester's lover. Chillingworth was obsessed by hate and revenge so much that when Dimmesdale died “... the life seemed to have departed...” (Hawthorne 72) from him and he died within a year of Dimmesdale's death. Chillingworth never felt guilt or attempted repentance because he “... violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart.” (Hawthorne 133). He sought to destroy Dimmesdale's
But Hester turns her back on these escape routes. She stays in the settlement, shackled, as if by an iron chain of guilt, to the scene of her crime and punishment. As Hester stands on the scaffold, thinking of her husband, he appears before her startled eyes at the edge of the crowd. And his first gesture is indicative of the man. Whatever shock or dismay he may feel at seeing his wife on the scaffold he immediately supresses his emotions and makes his face the image of calm. The glance he bends on Hester is keen and penetrative. Here is someone used to observing life rather than participating in it. His is a "furrowed visage" (43). Chillingworth looks like a man who has cultivated his mind at the "expense of another faculties - a perilous enterprise, in Hawthorne's view" (Loring 187). Where his overbearing intellect will take him, Hawthorne wants us to think that he could be the catalyst for great conflicts later in the novel. Chillingworth's finger raised to his lips, commanding Hester's silence, begins a pattern of secrecy that is the mainspring of the novel's plot; a secrecy that Hester must maintain in order to protect both her and her husband from the harshness of the Puritans. Hawthorne's emphasis on the ability of Chillingworth to analyze the human mind and reasoning foreshadows his treatment of Dimmesdale later in the novel.
Hester comes to the conclusions that she hates her past husband and that he had wronged her worse than she had him after recalling memories from her time, as is wife. The context of these memories had a happy appearance, but when Hester looks back upon them, she views them as some of her most unpleasant memories. She sees that when Rodger Chillingworth had convinced her to be happy by his side, when she did not know better, he had wronged her worse than any future acts she would commit against him. From this the narrator takes away the lesson that a man should never marry a woman unless she loves him with all her heart and passion. Hawthorne believes that if a man marries a woman without all her love, she will accuse him of providing her with
One of the sole purposes in works of literature is to follow the novel’s characters through psychological, physical, and emotional change. However, such transformations can occasionally become fatal to the protagonist’s mental and physical state. Shown especially in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author conveys the idea of destructive transformation through the embodiment of Roger Chillingworth as seen in his relationships with others and his symbol as a “leech.” Altering through such a hostile transformation thus led to the deterioration of his morality and his ultimate demise.
In The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth changes from a freelance intellectual to an estranged physician as feelings of revenge control his life. Chillingworth neglected his marriage with Hester and the consequences ended up having an effect on both of their identities. In Chapter 15, Hester states her opinion on Chillingworth: “He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!” (159). In Hester's eyes, Chillingworth's actions changed her perspective on life as he is the sole reason she sinned in the first place. Hester coped with a life change while Chillingworth coped with revenge as a general effect of Chillingworth's neglect. Roger Chillingworth was physically and emotionally consumed by his years long plans for revenge on Reverend Dimmesdale. In Chapter 14, Roger Chillingworth says this of the Reverend to Hester: “Yea...better had he died...to be tortured with frightful dreams...perpetual poison of the direst revenge!” (155). In this quote, we see that Chillingworth's anger has turned his vile actions into words as he discusses the poisoning and brainwashing he forces Dimmesdale to endure on a daily basis. Chillingworth allowed jealousy and guilt control his life until it eventually ended. Chillingworth's’ revenge ended up killing him in the end since his plans worked and Dimmesdale died on the scaffold in which Hester lived out her daily punishments. Roger was ultimately responsible for the destruction of the lives of Hester, Dimmesdale and himself.
Roger Chillingworth, in The Scarlet Letter, torments Arthur Dimmesdale for having an affair with Hester, his wife. In this role, Chillingsworth uses his cover as the doctor to involve himself in every attribute of Dimmesdale's life and destroy him. This is depicted in the discussion between Chillingworth and Hester outside of her cottage where Chillingworth explains that he is “a mortal man, with once a human heart” and that he has “become a fiend for [Dimmesdale's] especial torment” (Hawthorne 155). The change of Chillingworth to a “fiend” suggests that this situation forced him into a man that would control the mind of his victim to achieve his malevolent goal. This is the same role that Tom Buchanan takes on in The Great Gatsby after he discovers Daisy’s affair with Gatsby. Tom uses his role as Daisy’s powerful husband to control her and change her mind against leaving him. This is shown when they return home after the murder of Myrtle when Tom is “talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own”(Fitzgerald 145). The word “earnestness” intensifies the dramatic irony of the situation because it becomes clear that Tom does not actually care for Daisy in his personal affair with Myrtle but uses his flirtation skills to achieve his goal of keeping Daisy. Both Tom and Chillingworth use their power for personal gain by punishing those that have been
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.