With a raging desire for knowledge and a single-minded pursuit of
retribution, Chillingworth’s demonic actions lead him to damnation,
demonstrating the need for reconciliation in times of conflict.
Two Wrongs Make a Wrong
Revenge. It exists within everyone. Pervading throughout all social
relationships, revenge is damaging and detrimental to any hopes of
reconciliation. Those who commit revenge are cowardly people
unwilling to face the harsh realities of life. For the meek,
vengeance pleasures the soul; however, it is only temporal. Like an
addictive drug, revenge soothes anger and tension by sedating the mind
with ephemeral comfort. Despite the initial relief, pain ensues and
conditions seem worse than before. Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the
non-violence movement in India, stated once that “an eye for an eye
only ends up making the whole world blind.” There is no such thing as
a sweet revenge. In a sense, revenge is slowly killing oneself and
dragging another into death as well. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his
novel The Scarlet Letter, evinces this reality in the eventual fate of
Roger Chillingworth. Aroused by a vehement zeal for payback towards
the Reverend Dimmesdale, Chillingworth drains the life out of himself,
shown in his gradually decaying body and soul. With a raging desire
for knowledge and a single-minded pursuit of retribution,
Chillingworth’s demonic actions lead him to damnation, demonstrating
the need for reconciliation in times of conflict.
Chillingworth’s unquenched thirst for knowledge leads him to a state
of vengeance, foreshadowing its eventual control over his actions. As
a respected physician, Chillingworth was “a man of skill in all
Christian modes of physical science, and li...
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powerful grip over him, dies peacefully, and Chillingworth dies soon
after.
To plot revenge in any situation is harmful. Chillingworth’s plot of
revenge brings the downfall of Dimmesdale, as well as his own. For
the last seven years of his life, his days were passed with a
steadfast goal of creating torment for the man who sinned and hurt him
the most. In this case, Hawthorne is the Aesop, and he strives to
communicate the moral and truth about revenge. Like Mahatma Gandhi,
Hawthorne indicates that revenge is a continual process—one act of
revenge leads to more atrocious acts by the opposition, and in the end
no one wins. The human mind has been deceived. Revenge is the trap
we all fall into every once in a while. Humans just need to remember
to be open towards each other with forgiving and receiving arms and to
embrace the enemy with love, not hate.
this quote is when Chillingworth pretends to be a doctor so he can talk to Hester. He wants Hester to be dishonest by saying her husband is dead so no one will know him. He does not want anyone to know he is the husband to a sinful woman which is hypocritical because since they are married they should share equal ownership and be there for one another. He also told her he would follow her to England but yet he never did. Deceitfulness is shown in his character making him a bigger hypocrite because it shows he lacks honesty and contradiction of his feelings.
The physician both gave life to and leeched life from Reverend Dimmesdale. Within chapter nine of “The Scarlet Letter”, the reader is introduced to the true nature of Mr. Roger Chillingworth. At the beginning of the novel a rather different man is presented to the audience. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, employs his superior understanding of allusion, irony, and metaphor to reveal the true intentions of the character.
Some people, seek vengeance when they suffer a wrong. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the character Roger Chillingworth is no exception, but the burden of his revenge becomes so heavy that it leads to a transformation of character that is unprecedented. Though at first a humble physician, Roger Chillingworth, slowly, through acts of his seeking revenge on his wife’s lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, he transforms into a parasitic leech, which eventually leads to his downfall.
By helping Dimmesdale, Hester realizes that she is not truly alone, and that realization saved her from becoming some prideless woman that she was not. As Hester regained her natural dignity, she claimed "The scarlet letter had not done its office" (Hawthorne 184) because it never destroyed her pride (Hawthorne 184). Hester became "determined to redeem her error" (Hawthorne 185) she was too prideful to let her past defy her future. Hester knew that in order to help Dimmesdale, she must first face Chillingworth and end his evil ways. When Hester confronts Chillingworth, he refuses to forgive Dimmesdale (Swisher 48), so Hester boldly decides to break her vow to Chillingworth and tell Dimmesdale who the physician really is. By deciding to do
Throughout The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, fear is used as a control tactic. Fear escalates quickly through the responsible parties – Abigail Williams, Reverend John Hale, and Deputy Governor Danforth – and soon the town succumbs to it. Fear is not used by all of the responsible parties for control, as in controlling the people in order to be the “top dog” so to speak, but as a way to prevent their own accusation or conviction of witchcraft. They each used their own methods of creating fear in order to beat the stakes.
Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale from the Scarlet Letter as a man ridden with guilt and hypocrisy to fulfill his role as a corrupt person. The author specifically uses guilt to exemplify Dimmesdale’s role as a culpable person. Dimmesdale’s guilt is represented through his constant chest pains, “On that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain,” (Hawthorne 102). Hawthorne utilizes this symbol throughout the novel to display the guilty and corrupt personality of Arthur Dimmesdale. The pain resembles the guilt and the sin that lurks his soul. Roger Chillingworth became stationed in Dimmesdale’s home in order to tend to his pains, and Chillingworth concluded that
Hawthorne writes about Chillingworth “This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture...which analysed and gloated over” which shows how Chillingworth has been torturing Dimmesdale and enjoying it (p.302). Chillingworth did the evil of slowly torturing Dimmesdale. When he becomes fully evil he also changes physically. He looks completely evil too and “But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man...had vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look” displaying how he went from intelligent looking man to a fierce and scary looking man
The theme of revenge is found in both the novel The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller. Abigail Williams is seeking revenge on Elizabeth Proctor, and Roger Chillingworth wants the blood of the person that has been with Hester Prynne. These Characters do evil things to people in order to get what they want. Both characters end up losing and neither of them get what they want.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous piece of literature, The Scarlet Letter, is able to explain that secrets-- and the guilt associated with them-- possess the power to completely eradicate a person-- mentally and physically-- as well as their fundamental morals and character traits completely-- as exemplified through the character development of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, depicts the effects of an adulterous affair committed by a Puritan woman in seventeenth-century Boston, Massachusetts and the punishment she must endure. Hester Prynne, the heroine in the novel, assumes the role of the adulteress as she bears a child in the absence of her husband Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth, a man whose spite drives him to a mad pursuit of vengeance, seeks the deliberate destruction of the man he believes to have wronged him and avenges himself by preying on the accused man’s vitality. Chillingworth ultimately discovers the culprit is Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and devotes his life to tormenting him psychologically, feeding on his frail mental state. Hawthorne presents
.... Chillingworth drives away his wife, and accelerates Dimmesdale's physical decay. Chillingworth never learns how to love anyone, and he never loved himself. He never was upset because Hester broke a sacred trust, but because her absconding of their vows was one more example to invalidate Chillingworth's existence. Chillingworth finally realizes the error of his ways at the end of the novel, and that why he leaves all of his property to Pearl. Chillingworth becomes aware of the vast emptiness of his soul, and how he has been torturing others to avoid dealing with his own tortured soul. Chillingworth attacked two people who loved each other, so he tries to make amends by helping the product of this love. Chillingworth dies a lonely man, but becomes righteous in the end.
Throughout the progression of the story, Chillingworth was a character whom the author characterized negatively. The author wrote Chillingworth as a man with “slight deformity of figure” (Hawthorne 57), implying that there were flaws within the character. Moreover, Chillingworth was noted as a character that “violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart” (Hawthorne 185). Overall, Chillingworth was depicted as an ominous figure, thus further suggesting that he is the principal villain of the book. However, it is also crucial to understand that Dimmesdale is as much of an antagonist as Chillingworth. Hawthorne provides subtle implications to reinforce the claim that Dimmesdale is the predominant villain. Throughout the story, Chillingworth did not contribute much to the plot other than to seek revenge. On the other hand, Dimmesdale embedded the five main themes of alienation, guilt, individual versus society, consequences of sin, and initiation to the story. Furthermore, Chillingworth was not a villain by choice, rather, he inevitably became a villain due to the actions of Dimmesdale. Prior to Dimmesdale’s influence, Chillingworth was a man who cared about the welfare of others. It was only after Dimmesdale’s affair with his wife that shifted Chillingworth’s motive for the worse. The juxtaposition between the past and present motives of Chillingworth manifests the idea that Dimmesdale held the utmost importance in the story: without Dimmesdale, Chillingworth would not be a
In Chapter 9, “The Leech,” Hawthorne uses many devices to reveal aspects of both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale’s character. For instance, even the title of the chapter hold significance in regards to Chillingworth’s character. Hawthorn used the old-fashioned term “leech” for “physician” because of its double meaning; while Chillingworth is acting as the minister’s doctor, he is also metaphorically sucking the life out of his as he seeks his revenge. Throughout the chapter Chillingworth’s evil nature is developed through the descriptions of his features. While before his expression had been “calm, meditative, scholar-like,” Hawthorne soon describes the change in his face to be “something ugly and evil” (Hawthorne 145). In addition, Hawthorne
...rth's crimes against the Lord are more malevolent than those committed by Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale. Chillingworth's quest for revenge and truth leads him down a path of sin, and in the Puritan perspective, down the path to Hell.
After finding out about his wife’s infidelity, Chillingworth takes steps to take revenge against Dimmesdale, in in doing to fulfilling his primal desires of curiosity and schadenfreude (pleasure derived from others pain) (Hawthorne 113). Chillingworth’s tormenting of Dimmesdale becomes “a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce though still calm, necessity…” (Hawthorne 113). What may once have been a repressed desire when Chillingworth was a student of medicine, has become a fully manifested action. Repressed desires are pushed down into the depths of the unconscious, where the Id resides, yet because Chillingworth is influenced so heavily by the Id, his innate desires are able to fully manifest themselves. In Puritan society, human desires are largely considered to be sinful, and so acting upon these desires is the literal enactment of sin. Chillingworth certainly portrayed as evil, even to the extent that Pearl, Hester’s daughter, who has an uncanny intuition, recognizes Chillingworth’s nature and warns her mother to “Come away, or yonder old Black man will catch you!” (Hawthorne 118). Chillingworth’s predisposition to his Id is, for the Puritans, a predisposition to