In this world, there are two kinds of people: the honorable and the malevolent. Rarely do we ever find those with pure hearts. Revenge, a tactic used by the malevolent, is a way to demonstrate antagonism against people through the process of making their lives miserable until one’s rancor has become successful against their enemy. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne displays how a single sin gives a man with zero spirituality, rash goodness, eminent intelligence and soaring strength, the motivation to gain vengeance upon the man with whom his wife has committed the sinful act of adultery. Roger Chillingworth, the husband of Hester Prynne, becomes the antagonist in this novel when he discovers that his wife had conceived a child that …show more content…
Nothing stopped Chillingworth from making Arthur pay the debt. With so many tactics to gain his revenge: one being the use of his eminent intelligence as a scientist through the deceivement of the mind that will corrupt the human soul and make his victim suffer and two doing this by becoming closer to Arthur through the advantage of being known as a physician. Roger knew that if he killed Dimmesdale right away when he found out who he was to Pearl’s life, the suffering wouldn’t last as he wished for. Although his main obsession to torment the reverend was his motive to live, he would make him suffer until his conscious would burst and would make him confess, but he did not want his vengeance to come to an end so painlessly. Nevertheless, Chillingworth’s intellect is amazing in the way he tortured a man for years and never gave up until he acquired his full vengeful plan. Unfortunately The Scarlet Letter’s revelation came to its finale and Hawthorne’s point in revenge had its same meaning, revenge only lead to one’s own
Dimmesdale is a symbol of dishonesty and is a self-centered individual; he knows what he must do in order to make it honorable but lacks the courage and confidence to make himself public. In the Scarlet Letter, Hester tells Dimmesdale that the ship for Europe leaves in four days. He is delighted with the matter of being able to "fulfill his public duties" and give his Election Sermon before leaving. Although from this disdainful act, he worries that the congregation may notice the features found in Pearl’s face may be identical to his
Next we can view the sin of pride in the characters of the Puritan individuals and Roger Chillingsworth. Pride is seen as the internal belief that one’s self is more valuable than others. The Puritans are also quick to pass judgment on Hester who appears to them as having too much pride. When Reverend Dimmesdale tries to appeal to Hester to reveal Pearl’s father’s earthly name. She refuses by saying, "I will not speak! My child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one! (1206). But quite frankly she is doing the opposite of that, Hester is acting with a great deal of chastity; or self-control to the outside world to the true knowledge of her lustrous act with Arthur Dimmesdale. She spears Dimmesdale of the pain and humiliation she must endure herself.
Chillingworth mainly sinned out of revenge. He was angry about what Hester had done and wanted to get back at her and the other man. At the end of the book, Dimmesdale ends up dying, all because of what Chillingworth did. “‘Thou hast escaped me!’ Chillingworth repeated more than once.
Guilt is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined. When someone is feeling guilty there is often a force that is constantly reminding that person of their guilt. For instance, in the Scarlet Letter a woman due to the crime she committed was forced to wear a letter A , but the A was one of many things that remind her of her crime. Hester Prynne is the woman who was forced to wear the A. Hester was married to Roger Chillingworth, who went missing for a few years, and thus she had an affair with Reverend Dimmesdale. In addition to her affair they had a baby named Pearl.
Roger Chillingworth is the symbol for evil in this novel with a personal agenda in place of a moral code making him the perfect example of how duplicity is never beneficial. Hawthorne conveys Chillingworth’s deception in the quote, “It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile.” Time and again Chillingworth hid his true identity by presenting himself as a gentle friend and preforming good deeds. For example, he insisted on the priest minimizing his workload in order to prevent an early death. Nevertheless, when Roger made the decision to seek revenge on his wife’s lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, he descended into a deep evil derangement becoming somewhat of a heartbroken devil. Consequently, this sealed his own tragic fate. "In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office." Chillingworth was an extremely learned scholar void of compassion who in the end, was the cause of his own demise. Roger Chillingworth was another character used by Hawthorne to show that deceit and dishonesty can do no good in the long
Holding on to sin can lead to isolation and alienation. Hester falls in love with another man and commits adultery.
Have you ever done something to make yourself unwanted somewhere? The book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, during the 17th century. Now and then are very different times, the townspeople wanted Hester dead, but in this time, there would be very little punishment. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the symbols of light and dark to depict good and evil among the characters Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's bold novel, The Scarlet Letter, revolves around sin and punishment. The main characters of the novel sharply contrast each other in the way they react to the sin that has been committed
“Without forgiveness life is governed by... an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation,” by Roberto Assagioli can be the essence of the theme vengeance and forgiveness that Nathaniel Hawthorn weaves in throughout his novel, The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorn weaves in the theme vengeance and forgiveness to encourage us to forgive people more often to avoid resentment and retaliation as part of the many lessons he tries to teach his readers. This theme is one of the major themes in the novel and it has been developed in two different ways using the three main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. The first way Hawthorn uses to develop the theme is through the Puritan community and Hester. The scarlet letter, a symbol of the communities’
“On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him." Chapter 1, pg. 46
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s famous standard of American literature, The Scarlett Letter, Hawthorne examines individual cases of sin occurring within society known for its intolerance of sin and strict religious principles, the Puritans. In The Scarlet Letter , each of the main characters, whether protagonist or antagonist, are guilty of a sin or form of “evil”. However, one character stands out from the rest. This character is guilty of the worst form of malice and evil in the entire book. His name is Roger Chillingworth. By reviewing his sinful actions, motivations and personality, as well as the different symbols Hawthorne creates to represent him, the true extent of Chillingworth's evil becomes apparent.
In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work , at the same time however, parallels can be drawn between the characters of The Scarlet Letter and of today’s society.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, a well-know Dark Romantic, employs the issues prevalent in Dark Romanticism in his novel The Scarlet Letter. These include the concepts of: guilt and sin, good and evil, and madness in the human psyche. Guilt and sin are heavily addressed in the novel, focusing on Hester’s outward versus Dimmesdale’s hidden guilt, and the sins committed by the adulterous couple and the revenge-driven Roger Chillingworth. The idea of what good and evil are is questioned in the novel. For example, the reader is led to question if Hester was right in not revealing Dimmesdale, and in turn if both Dimmesdale and Chillingworth were
Thy Hoang Per. 1 Mrs. Miller 09/21/14 Scaffold Quotes #1 “Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man’s shoulders above the street”(9) Significance: The scaffold symbolizes the cruel public exposure of private sins and the means of redemption through confession.
The themes of sin and revenge in The Scarlet Letter are made prominent and clear, as Hawthorne tends to express every theme in the novel. The two are closely tied together in the case of Roger Chillingworth. In The Scarlet Letter,