Theme Of Revenge In The Scarlet Letter

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In today’s society there are many forms of revenge. Revenge can destroy a person from the inside out. The quest for revenge can become so all consuming that a person can waste their life away and lose who they are in the process. This is demonstrated in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, in one of it’s main characters Roger Chillingworth. Roger Chillingworth spends years attempting to take revenge on the characters Hester Prynn and Arthur Dimmesdale. When Chillingworth is crossed by Hester and Dimmesdale he feels so much anger and pain boiling up inside him that he must act out. The character Chillingworth in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne becomes the embodiment of evil because of the way he strives to demolish another human being’s life by seeking revenge. The first place Hawthorne shows Chillingworth’s quest for revenge is when he figures out Dimmesdale is the person Hester commits adultery with. …show more content…

He wants to damage Dimmesdale more than anyone has ever wanted to hurt their enemy. This need for revenge destroys Chillingworth in the end. His body changes from the anger and he becomes deformed. His heart changes and he becomes miserable and only thinks of how he can ruin Dimmesdale. Chillingworth’s happiness depends on Dimmesdale and Hester’s suffering. After seven years progressed Chillingworth and Hester meet in the woods to discuss the scarlet letter. Hester realizes how evil and nasty Chillingworth has become. “What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, —thence, peradventure, to the gallows!’” (188). Once Chillingworth found out Dimmesdale was the person Hester commits adultery with, he could have easily told on him and had him locked up or hung. Instead Chillingworth chose to keep it a secret and psychologically torture

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