More handpicked essays just for you.
The background of the scarlet letter
Character analysis essay on hester prynne
Historical setting of the scarlet letter
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the final chapters of the story, Hester Prynne begins to clearly acknowledge and express her hatred of Roger Chillingworth. Hester comes to realize that she is not nearly as sinful as Chillingworth, despite her unfaithfulness and her public ignominy, and that she abhors him for his crimes against her. In the imagery in this scene, Hester demonstrates Chillingworth’s connections to death, opposition to virtuousness, and the Devil; which, in turn, serve to clarify Chillingworth’s position as Hester’s antagonist and moral opposite. In this passage, Hester watches as Chillingworth gathers herbs in the garden, and she wonders at how the earth has tolerated his existence upon it. According to Hester, Chillingworth’s moral corruption infects the nature around him, causing the earth to create poisonous herbs. Hester claims that Chillingworth is so nefarious that the very sun, a symbol of purity and virtue, twists its light so that it does not touch him. The earth, being incapable of enduring his existence any longer, would swallow him whole, leaving behind a fertile patch for only the …show more content…
Chillingworth symbolizes disease, as can be seen when Hester says that “every...growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch.” God-fearing people in the community in The Scarlet Letter are meant to nurture and spread kindness, yet Chillingworth contaminates the herbs around him with his sadistic need to harm others, making them poisonous. Hester also says that, should the earth swallow Chillingworth, he would leave a “barren and blasted spot” where “vegetable wickedness” would grow in his absence. These images demonstrate Chillingworth’s connection to death and depravity, and solidify Hester’s fear that Chillingworth is intentionally corrupting and killing Dimmesdale, just as he does the herbs in the
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.
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.
This strategy exemplifies Hawthorne’s theme that sin must be taken responsibility for because being dishonest will only lead to more temptation. Chillingworth does admit to one of his blames of leaving Hester behind, but choosing his temptation over redemption has formed his obsession to making Hester lover’s suffer miserably with guilt, which fuels Roger’s vengeance. Secondly, Chillingworth’s internal conflict was illustrated through the changing of his appearance. Roger was once a kind, well respected, man of science; However, his vengeance has transformed his physical character into a devilish creature. When Hester and Pearl were visiting Governor’s Bellingham’s house, Hester notices the change over Roger’s features, “how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure misshapen” (93).
When asked to describe Roger Chillingworth, peers say he was an upstanding, respectful, concerned citizen. They would have been right, but he didn’t let anyone know just how much he cared. With the loss of Hester, he became filled with anger and jealousy and eventually let his emotions overtake him. At the close of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the malevolent state of Roger Chillingworth’s heart made him the guiltiest.
Chillingworth saw Hester, after emerging from a great period of solitude, as a symbol of life. He regarded her as almost a savior. ...
Letter, Hester Prynne mentions that never loves Roger Chillingworth, (Hawthorne 63). As a consequence, in Hester Prynne’s eyes, her marriage is a false relationship. But afterwards, when her husband hides the reality of their relati...
Chillingworth contributes to those of guilt and alienation. For example, Chillingworth expresses his own guilt through the ironic searching of Dimmesdale’s. “He had begun an investigation… with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous of truth… instead of human passions and wrongs inflicted upon himself,” (Hawthorne 121). It is conspicuous that Chillingworth, being engrossed in finding the truth of Dimmesdale and his adultery, which he observed through victimizing him, inflicted his own sin upon himself. However, Chillingworth does not only inflict guilt upon himself, but on Dimmesdale as well. The observable effects are “his inward trouble [which] drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with the better light of the church in which he had been born and bred,” (Hawthorne 136). These effects, which Dimmesdale puts blame on his inward trouble, or sin, is caused in part by the victimization of Chillingworth towards him. Hence, Chillingworth has altered Dimmesdale’s original, clergy-like practices to those that are a derivative of sin and guilt. A testament of inflicted alienation upon Dimmesdale is seen in evidence brought up prior, on page 128 of The Scarlet Letter, “… a bodily disease, which we look upon as a whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be
Also Chillingworth tries very hard to find out who her secret lover is and even tries asking Hester. “‘ Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine,’ resumed he , with a look of confidence , as if destiny were at one with him” ( Hawthorne 70). This quote says that Chillingworth tries to ask Hester who her secret lover is and even though she refuses to answer him, he feels confident that he will find out. This means that Chillingworth is going to harm her secret lover after he finds him. Therefore he will do whatever he can to torture him and get his
Chillingworth is trying to convince Dimmesdale not to confess he’s Hester’s lover because he’s afraid of losing his source of power. Once Dimmesdale refuses Chillingworth and confesses to everyone, “Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have deported.” (Hawthorne p. 251) Chillingworth feels worthless and becomes lifeless once Dimmesdale confesses. It’s as if Chillingworth’s soul (or whatever was left of it) left his body and he became nothing. Chillingworth allowed his obsession to consume him so much that once he lost that source, he lost his life. After Dimmesdale’s death, Chillingworth shrivelled away because he no longer felt a need to stay. He’s described as, “This unhappy man [who] had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge, and when… there was no more devil’s work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough…” (Hawthorne p. 254) Chillingworth was wrapped in a cloak of corruption, and once his revenge was finished, he felt unfulfilled and empty. He allowed his obsession to become his only aspect in
When the reader first meets Roger Chillingworth standing watching Hester on the scaffold, he says that he wishes the father could be on the scaffold with her. “‘It irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side” (46). At this point, Chillingworth wishes that Mr. Dimmesdale was also receiving the sort of shame Hester is being put through. Throughout the first few chapters of the novel, however, Chillingworth’s motives become more and more malicious. By the time Chillingworth meets Hester in her prison cell, he has decided to go after Mr. Dimmesdale’s soul. Chillingworth turns to this goal because Mr. Dimmesdale did not endure Hester’s shame on the scaffold. Had Mr. Dimmesdale chosen to reveal himself at the time of Hester’s shame, he would not have had to endure the pain of Roger Chillingworth’s tortures of his soul.
Although Hester’s adultery with Dimmesdale leads her to evil, it is her silence about her marriage to Chillingworth that allows her to become a servant of the devil. Stein argues that Hester remains silent, because “she subconsciously asserts a wishful desire for earthly happiness with the man who contributed to her ruin. And unintentionally she becomes an accessory of Chillingworth in his scheme of revenge” (Stein). Despite her trials, Hester still retains the dream that one day she will be able to live blissfully with Dimmesdale, separate from any Puritan prejudice. It is this misguided delusion that allows Chillingworth to manipulate Hester into remaining silent about her relationship with him, for she knows that revealing it would destroy any chance she and Dimmesdale have at a life together. Hawthorne directly states this temptation, writing, “there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar” (Hawthorne 89). Chillingworth, acting as Lucifer, offers Hester the false hope that she can live happily with Dimmesdale. This false hope forces Hester to remain in the village and convinces her to remain silent about her marriage with Chillingworth, dooming her to a Faustian
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.
From the very moment Chillingworth is introduced, he is deceitful towards the Puritan society. Chillingworth appears in the novel, seeming to know nothing of the scene at the scaffold. He asks of a townsperson: "...who is this woman? - and wherefore is she here to set up to public shame?" (Hawhtorne 67). Yet, we find in the next chapter that he indeed knows who Hester is, because Chillingworth is the lawful husband of her. He decieves the people of Boston to avoid the humiliation his wife brought upon him. In this respect, Chillingworth sins against the eight commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour" (Gerber 26).
As the novel progressed, Chillingworth fits the profile of ‘vengeance destroys the avenger’. When Roger Chillingworth is first introduced to the reader, we see a kind old man, who just has planted the seeds for revenge. Although he did speak of getting his revenge, when Hester first met her husband in her jail cell, she did not see any evil in him. Because Hester would not tell him who she had slept with, Chillingworth vowed that he would spend the rest of his life having his revenge and that he would eventually suck the soul out of the man, whom she had the affair with. “There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares” (Hawthorne, 101) As the novel develops, Roger Chillingworth has centered himself on Arthur Dimmesdale, but he cannot prove that he is the “one.” Chillingworth has become friends with Dimmesdale, because he has a “strange disease,” that needed to be cured; Chillingworth suspects something and begins to drill Dimmesdale. “… The disorder is a strange one…hath all the operation of this disorder been fairly laid open to me and recounted to me” (Hawthorne, 156).
For example, on page 132 it says, “What evil have I done the man?...I tell thee...for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine...his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret!...he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!” Chillingworth believes that he’s didn’t do anything wrong and Dimmesdale would have been hopeless without him. He doesn’t realize that his actions were poisonous. What Chillingworth did was worsen Dimmesdale’s condition and was only able to get an exclusive view of Dimmesdale’s suffering. Chillingworth is a true antagonist as he wanted to witness Dimmesdale breaking down instead of “healing” him as he had