Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Character of hester prynne
How does nathaniel hawthorne define sin in the scarlet letter
Character of hester prynne
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Character of hester prynne
How does sin affect people and their nature? Sin, happening to be the darkness of the world that causes immorality, affects people in countless ways. Sin has the ability to change people completely without any forewarning. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells the story of how sin affects the lives of people. “When he referred to sin, he seemed to assume a force of evil so pervasive that it did not need to be embodied in anyone or in any particular action. It was all general and vague,” (Donoghue, 2). It demonstrates this through the characters of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. Sin affected these three people in different ways: Hester lived an awfully shunned, isolated life; Dimmesdale felt the guilt plaguing him till the day he died; and Chillingworth became a sinister, spiteful man consumed with revenge. According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, sin affects people by completely altering their personalities and transforming the way others felt about them into something undesired. This was shown through his three characters: Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Hester Prynne.
Roger Chillingworth was cold and uncaring, yet he was calm and regular in the eyes of others. He was a physician. He cared about how he was seen in the eyes of others and was selfish. His unkind nature started to spiral the day he found out that Hester had committed adultery. He wanted to know who the man was. Although she Hester would never revile the man she committed her sinful act with, he was determined to discover who it was. His nature was not what it had been before. He had become more evil and sinister. “But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was she best remembered in h...
... middle of paper ...
...be molded by it, like Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth. Sin will change people, but it is up to them if it changes them for the better or for the worse.
Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2003. Print.
Pimple, Kenneth D. "'Subtle, but remorseful hypocrite': Dimmesdale's Moral Character." Studies in the Novel 25.3 (Fall 1993): 257-271. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 158. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 11 May 2014.
Donoghue, Denis. "Hawthorne and Sin." Christianity and Literature 52.2 (2003): 215+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 11 May 2014.
"Who? The Characters." The Scarlet Letter: A Reading. Nina Baym. Boston: Twayne, 1986. 52-82. Twayne's Masterwork Studies 1. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 11 May 2014.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Enriched Classic ed. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.
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). This example describes how his sole purpose in life seizes to exist, the revenge that he lived for was taken at that exact moment and he had no other reason to live. Roger Chillingworth is the most troubled character in the book; He wanted to be light but revenge slowly ate him alive until he was a dark person.
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.
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.
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the deceptive Roger Chillingworth could most certainly be considered a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the novel, Roger Chillingworth everlastingly remains misleading as to whether he lies on the side of good or evil. Even at the end of The Scarlet Letter, the knowledge of Roger Chillingworth is extremely nebulous. The mysterious Roger Chillingworth, although ultimately emanating to be evil, attests to be a challenge when determining his morality. Roger Chillingworth attempts to beguile us by enacting the role of a physician, and ensconces his relationship with Hester Prynne. He lives with Arthur Dimmesdale, vindicating that he is serving Arthur Dimmesdale a helpful medicine, while he is actually depleting the very life from his bones. Roger Chillingworth, therefore, achieves his moral ambiguity through deception, cleverness, and an unknown history.
Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of his society
Roger Chillingworth’s main internal conflict was his personal revenge towards Arthur Dimmesdale. Roger is a dynamic character who changes from being a caring and mindful doctor to a dark creature enveloped in retaliation. His character possesses a clear example of the result when a person chooses sin by letting his vengeance get the better of him. For example, Roger constantly asks Hester to tell him who has caused her punishment. As Roger visits Hester at the prison, he is determined to find out who Hester’s lover was, “...few things hidden from the man, who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of mystery” (64).
Roger Chillingworth himself represents revenge. Some even believe him to be representative of evil or Satan. What is ignored in the cases of interpreting him as Satan or as evil is the fact that he has been cruelly wronged by both Hester and Dimmesdale. Because Hester and Dimmesdale are portrayed as protagonists in the novel, Chillingworth is automatically classified, because of his opposition towards the two, as antagonist. He is not actually this at all when regarded without the negative connotations under which he is crushed within the book.
Baym, Nina. Introduction. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York City: Penguin Books USA, Inc. 1986.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Scarlet Letter”. American Literature: Volume One. Ed. William E. Cain. New York: Pearson, 2004. 809-813. Print
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter." Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales. Ed. James McIntosh. New York: Norton, 1987.
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).
The Scarlet Letter, a classic American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, contains a plot that follows the controversial life of Hester Prynne, the main protagonist of the story. Set in the mid 1600’s in Boston, Massachusetts, it represented the Puritan society and its ideals at that time. Its rich plot has enticed and enraptured readers for many years, while Historical elements have allowed readers to analyze and understand the content better. The Scarlet Letter is a piece of historical fiction that contains a real representation of the period in which it is set in and is mostly historically accurate, barring a few minor inaccuracies.
One character who demonstrated the effects of sin was Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne commits adultery with the Reverend Dimmesdale. Because this act resulted in a child, she was unable to hide her wrongdoing while Dimmesdale’s analogous sin went unnoticed. Her punishment for her crime was to spend a few hours on the scaffold to face public humiliation, and she was forced to wear the letter “A” on her clothes for the rest of her life. Hester’s punishment for her sin was distinguished in that the results of her actions were for the most part external. Hawthorne describes what Hester’s punishment was like when he states, “In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished.”(p.44) Although Hester was somewhat emotionally damaged through public humiliation and alienation, Hester was actually internally content at the fact that she was paying for her crime. The consequences which Hester faced for her actions were the result of her admission of guilt. This proved to be much less harsh then the internal punishment which Dimmesdale faced.
Sewall, Richard B. "The Scarlet Letter: Criticism." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 319-27.