In the American gothic novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, evil forms in many ways, but it is most frequently seen through Roger Chillingworth. Evil can also been seen through the character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Roger Chillingworth and Captain Ahab are both evil, but are different in many ways, such as the reason they want revenge, if they work alone or with others, and how vocal they are about their revenge. One thing that makes Chillingworth and Ahab so different is what caused them to become the revenge-obsessed monsters that they are. In The Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth is the husband of Hester Prynne. He comes to New England to find that his wife had cheated on him and had a child with another man. The pain he feels is purely emotional, and causes him a …show more content…
Chillingworth is very silent about it. He forces his wife to remain silent about who he is, so he can better carry out his plan. He is very deceptive, and tries to make himself seem like the good guy, like a friend of Dimmesdale. When Dimmesdale tries to stand on the scaffold and confess with Prynne and Pearl by his side, Chillingworth coaxes him down. He wants to watch the reverend suffer from the guilt he has been holding on to. However, Captain Ahab is very different. He does not hold his plans inside. He tells everyone on the ship about his plan to kill Moby Dick and encourages them to help him. Ahab brings up the whale every chance he gets, and it is always to a crowd of his sailors. Although there are many similar things between Roger Chillingworth and Captain Ahab, one can clearly see the differences between them too. Chillingworth hurts emotionally, works alone, and is quiet about his revenge. Ahab hurts physically and emotionally, works with a large number of people, and makes sure everyone knows what happened to
The fact that revenge destroys both the victim and the seeker is another theme presented in the Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale is the victim of Chillingworth’s revenge upon Hester and whoever her lover happened to be. Dimmesdale, beside his self-inflicted harm was also not helped by the fact Chillingworth enjoyed watching him waste away. However, Chillingworth is also subject to this destiny as evidence by his change in the novel. Chillingworth was considered wise and aged in the beginning of the novel, although, later he is seen as being dusky and evil.
Hester Prynne, the protagonist in the book The Scarlet Letter, has committed the sin of adultery, but learned to use that mistake as a form of strength. Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, sent her to America and was supposed to follow her, but never arrived in Boston. While Hester was waiting on Chillingworth, she had an affair with the town minister, Dimmesdale. As a result, Hester gave birth to a beautiful daughter and was forced to wear the scarlet
In The Scarlet Letter, the main characters Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale are tangled in a web of deceit, which is the result of a sin as deadly as the Grimm Reaper himself: adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, describes the feeling of deceit using the main characters; for each of the cast the reaction to the deceit is different, thus the reader realizes the way a person reacts to a feeling differs between each character.
In this case, the whale Moby Dick would be the oppressor that harmed Ahab by amputating his leg. Similar to his modern-day counterparts, the captain expresses this condemning rage through his speech. For example, he lashes out, "That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will
In Moby Dick, it follows the accounts of a young man named Ishmael. Ishmael is looking for money in the whaling business, the same thing as hunting game, but for whale blubber and whatever else they have to offer. At a tavern, he signs up to go whaling upon a ship named the Pequod, under the captaining of a man named Ahab. At first, Ishmael thinks he’s just your average whaling trip, but soon realizes there’s a deeper story behind Ahab. Ahab’s true intentions are to find a specific whale called Moby Dick. The whale is famous for sinking hundreds of whaling ships, and one was Ahab’s previous ship. In that process, Ahab also lost part of his leg at the knee. As you can imagine, most of the story Ahab is almost insane. At nothing anyone calls
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a study of the effects of sin on the hearts and minds of the main characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. Sin strengthens Hester, humanizes Dimmesdale, and turns Chillingworth into a demon.
It is far too easy for a reader of The Scarlet Letter to simply brand Chillingworth as evil. The reader must pay attention to the complexities of the position which Chillingworth is forced into to understand that he is not evil or bad, at least not completely. Chillingworth is only a human put into a terrible position which he reacts to. In fact, it is not beyond reach to say that under his circumstances, Chillingworth was actually the hero, the protagonist; and Hester and Dimmesdale are the true villains.
Arthur is surprised by Roger’s kindness and states this, “Doust thou know me so little… then to give the medicine against all harm” (Hawthorne 68). Arthur knows Chillingworth so little that he is surprised at how kind he has been to him, and is very grateful at the fact. It was probably hard for Chillingworth to do such a thing for Arthur because of the hatred he has for him. Roger had a lot more darkness in him than he did light. Hawthorne describes Roger’s purpose in life leaving him by stating, “Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him with a blank dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed” (232).
Villains come in all forms of malevolence throughout all types of literature. They help to drive the plot of the story and influence the themes and purposes as desired by the author. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the character assigned the appellation of Roger Chillingworth is the main antagonist. He is first seen attending the public humiliation of Hester Prynne, who is the protagonist of the book. Chillingworth is established as a physician whom Hester had previously cheated on. Throughout the novel, Chillingworth is seen as being controlling over Arthur Dimmesdale, who testifies to one of the book’s main themes of guilt. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s historical drama The Scarlet Letter renders Roger Chillingworth as the villain who
The quote in Chapter 20 of The Scarlet Letter applies to Roger Chillingworth for numerous reasons. Roger Chillingworth is first introduced as an strange man with a humped back and deformed shoulders, who is a kind of creepy looking individual who recently arrived to the town. Once he arrives he makes eye contact with Hester and she knew it was her husband, the man who sent her to America alone. He tells people “I am a stranger,and have been a wanderer,sorely against my will.I have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward…”(69-70) The fact that Chillingworth does not reveal his true identity illustrates that maybe he is going to to revoke revenge upon Hester and whoever she committed adultery with. When Roger Chillingworth came to the jail cell to help baby Pearl and Hester, he offered her and Pearl medicine, she was hesitant to drink it. But when he sees her hesitation he responds with “Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance,what could I do better for my object than to let thee live”(82) Even though Chillingworth didn’t directly say he's planning his
The amount of involvement in one’s profession is another important theme in the two stories. Ahab takes his job as a whaler quite seriously. He is obsessed by the desire to destroy the whale that shattered his life. In contrast, the narrat...
In “The Scarlet Letter,” the main character Hester get punished for adultery. In the beginning, she thought that her husband has died so she fell in love with Dimmesdale. However, her husband did not die and came back. Her husband, Chillingworth, later finds out that Hester has a secret lover. Therefore tried to find out who he is. At first Chillingworth does not reveal himself as Hester’s husband because she was being punished for adultery and he did not want to be ashamed. Later he tries to find out Hester’s secret lover by asking her but she will not tell him which makes him for desperate and angry. When he finds out that the secret lover is Dimmesdale, he finds out a secret about Dimmesdale.
Roger Chillingworth utilizes his deceptiveness in a number of occasions throughout the novel. For example, in chapter three, Roger Chillingworth innocently approaches Hester Prynne, acting as if he has never once seen her. Roger Chillingworth even interrogates a local townsman about Hester Prynne and her committed sins. This shows that Roger Chillingworth purposely intends to concept a deceptive knowledge of his character in order to disconcert one who may read The Scarlet Letter. Although Roger Chllingworth is the foremost antagonist of the novel, his deceptiveness empowers him to withhold an excessive amount of moral ambiguity. With this moral ambiguity, Roger Chillingworth is able to surreptitiously accomplish a various amount of things, including the death of Arthur Dimmesdale himself.
The Scarlet Letter illustrates that the illumination of self-deception gapes open after one like the very jaws of hell. This is apparent through all the main characters of the novel. Although Hawthorne's work has several imperfect people as the main characters, including Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, the worst sinner is Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth commits the greater sin because of his failure to forgive; he has an insatiable appetite for revenge; he receives extreme pleasure in torturing Dimmesdale. Hester Prynne, however, has committed sins of almost the same magnitude.
...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.