What is the difference between love and hate? Both involve passion. Both can take over a person’s mind. Yet one is inherently evil, and one is good. This is an important question Hawthorne brings up at the end of the novel, The Scarlet Letter. Throughout the book he shows that love is not all that it seems. In fact, it leads to sin, to people’s own demise, and it rarely ends well. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, in this book support that theme as three of the most central characters. Hester is a great example of a person whose life was drastically changed in the name of love. Everyone in town knew that she was married, but that her husband had been away for a while. Then she became pregnant. “...They [the town leaders] …show more content…
First of all, the woman he cared for admitted to betraying him when she said “I have greatly wronged thee” (69). Even though he knew she did not return his feelings, he thought she would be loyal, so he let her into his heart. However, Hester found love for herself while he was away, and that undoubtedly hurt him. This pain inside him created his need for revenge and he exclaimed “I shall see him tremble… Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!” (70). Quickly, he became an evil person consumed by his hatred. Hawthorne often compares him to the Devil by calling him “the black man”, further proving how evil he became. This was all caused by his broken heart and anger towards the two lovers. He died after Dimmesdale did because his evil purpose was gone and “All his strength and energy… seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up , shrivelled away…” (232). His death could have been avoided if he had either never loved Hester, or Hester had not fallen in love with Dimmesdale. Torturing Dimmesdale would not have become his sole reason for living therefore he would not lose his strength and energy once Dimmesdale did die. Just like the other two, Chillingworth did not have happy experiences associated with falling in love. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth to show his views on love. To him, love has negative side effects, including driving people to sin and/or their own undoing. Hawthorne knew that love is referred to as a wonderful thing, but it is also a powerful force that can drive people over the edge. Love and hate may actually have more in common than people
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.
Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempted to expose the varying ways in which different people deal with lingering guilt from sins they have perpetrated. The contrasting characters of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale ideally exemplified the differences in thought and behavior people have for guilt. Although they were both guilty of committing the same crime, these two individuals differed in that one punished themselves with physical and mental torture and the other chose to continue on with their life, devoting it to those less fortunate than they.
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.
Years ago, Hester promised Chillingworth to keep his identity a secret, thus allowing him to do evil to Dimmesdale. Chillingworth believes that it was his fate to change from a kind man to a vengeful fiend. He believes that it’s his destiny to take revenge and thus would not stop until he does so.
Hawthorne demonstrates how love is a weakness though his character, Hester Prynne. When the townspeople try to coerce Hester into giving them the name of her daughter’s father, she refuses to “give [her] child a father” (68). This act displays an intense amount of devotion to her lover, in that she willingly protects him and his reputation at the expense
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.
One should not violate the godliness of a pure heart. Hester was a radical woman in her time, more like a 20th century woman. She knew that true love was more important than a phony, love-less marriage.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has introduced a character that has been judged harshly. Because, she has been misinformed of her husband’s death; therefore, she was greave and had sought comfort resulting in a baby from the lover whom gave her comfort. When her secret had been discovered she was isolated for committing a treacherous crime of adultery, as one of her punishments she was forced to wear an A on her chest. The novel presents a structure of a society, using symbolism and diction to give underline meaning to the themes, portraying religious tendencies ruled by the philosophy of good and evil.
In the book, Chillingworth is a physician who had been captured by Native Americans sometime ago and subsequently released by them into Boston, Massachusetts, who was strictly a Puritan settlement at the time. In the years of his imprisonment by the Indians, he was taught many native herbs and plants of the New World, and their uses on the human body. Through this, he entered Boston as a physician, known to have "gathered herbs, and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes." ( The Scarlet Letter , p. 120). Chillingworth had the knowledge of a particular drug, Atropine, which caused a sickness that closely resembled the condition of Dimmesdale. Chillingworth's motive for retribution to Dimmesdale for his adultery was very clear throughout the book, "There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine." (p. 80). Chillingworth's vengeful nature consumed his life and his only goal in life became the torment of Hester's adulterous husband, Dimmesdale. He was already showing signs of sickness, assumed by the reader to be attributed to his guilty conscience, and these were only amplified by the poisoning Chillingworth had inflicted upon him.
... Chillingworth is the representation of the punishment that falls on all sinners. Hester, whose daughter and Scarlet Letter are always reminding everyone of her adultery, is always in the open, and has no chance to hide her shame. Dimmesdale, who calls himself a pollution and is so tormented on the inside that he feels the need to physically harm himself by scourging, is eaten from the inside out, and Roger Chillingworth, whom one just saw is a vengeful monster, who swears revenge on the father, and who lives for that single purpose, truly is retribution. These people are tormented by the type of sin they portray, and their punishments last so long, and are so painful (especially in Hester and Dimmesdale’s cases) that anyone could easily make the argument that the literal flames, and the stake that accompanies them, would be preferable punishments for these sinners.
The theme Hawthorne builds up in Chillingworth is not simply his pain and torment. It is a more important representation of the weakness in the values of the people in Puritan times, and how their perseverance for "justice" skewed their views on life and forgiveness. Because of his mindset, Chillingworth torments himself with his goal to destroy Dimmesdale just as much as Dimmesdale tortures himself for their seven years together. Chillingworth is ruining his own life and does not realize it, because he no longer sees the value in life as he tries to ruin one.
Obsession and hatred are such corrupt concepts that if one lets it consume them, it can make them inhuman. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the character Roger Chillingworth is a walking symbol for how allowing revenge to become an obsession can change you into something horrible. As the story progresses, Chillingworth changes into a monster as his need for revenge and hatred grows stronger, causing him to sin by endlessly torturing Dimmesdale. Chillingworth grows into a more menacing person as he becomes a puppet to his own hatred, sin, and obsession.
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.
In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne analyzes Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. In the story, Hester is the main character of the story and was called Mistress Prynne (Hawthorne 70). Dimmesdale, in the story was referred to as Reverend Dimmesdale (Hawthorne 90). Chillingworth was originally named, Roger Prynne but later in the story he changed his name to Roger Chillingworth. In the story, Hester committed adultery with Dimmesdale against Chillingworth and in the beginning she got punished and sent to prison and later she got to get out of prison but with the exception of having to wear the letter A on her breast every time she went out in to town.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are many moral and social themes develped throughout the novel. Each theme is very important to the overall effect of the novel. In essence, The Scarlet Letter is a story of sin, punishment and the importance of truth. One theme which plays a big role in The Scarlet Letter is that of sin and its effects. Throughout the novel there were many sins committed by various characters. The effects of these sins are different in each character and every character was punished in a unique way. Two characters were perfect examples of this theme in the novel. Hester Prynne and The Reverend Dimmesdale best demonstrated the theme of the effects of sin.