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. 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. Roger Chillingworth’s cleve... ... middle of paper ... ...ment the moral ambiguity of his character. Roger Chillingworth could be considered a morally ambiguous character because of his deceptivenss, cleverness, and nebulous past. It is with these three elements that Roger Chillingworth’s moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Straightforwardly, all of the characters in The Scarlet Letter also could be considered to comprise some degree of moral ambiguity. Arthur Dimmesdale, for example, is morally ambiguous because of his exertion to ensconce his identity as the father of Pearl. Moral ambiguity is emphatically significant in The Scarlet Letter because not only does it act as an attribute for characters, but is an extensive theme in The Scarlet Letter as well. Therefore, moral ambiguity is not only extant in Roger Chillingworth, but very much rather in all of The Scarlet Letter.
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
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 The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne constantly attributes the qualities of a thief to the mysteriously shady character, Roger Chillingworth. Throughout the novel, we see that regardless of who he is around, or where he is, he is repeatedly referred to countless of times as ?the old Black Man? (131). This nickname that he is given displays quite evidently that Hawthorne had no doubt intended for Chillingworth to assume the role of a cold, and shadowy personage akin to that of a lowly thief. As thieves are well known for and need to be, they are usually silent, stealthy, and more often than not, baffling, in the sense that no one else knows their cunningness and what they really are thinking of when they commit their crimes. These attributes match up directly to Roger?s personality, and throughout the novel, we see that he gradually grows to become the exact impersonation of a thief. The below examples serve to demonstrate these similarities. In the first few chapters, all the way to the tenth chapter, the reader suspects that Chillingworth has a hidden motive in tagging along as Arthur Dimmesdale?s physician. However, toward the end of chapter eleven, we realize that the mysterious Chillingworth was not simply following Dimmesdale around to hear in on other people?s confessions but also to spy on the reverend minister and his activities! After a period of time, the physician digs up something from Dimmesdale?s past that we are not aware of just yet. However, the reaction which we see upon Chillingworth?s face after his discovery is curious indeed, with him ?
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.
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 theme of hypocrisy is evident throughout The Scarlet Letter, as seen in Hawthorne’s characterization of society, Roger Chillingworth, and most prominently, Arthur Dimmesdale.
The Scarlet Letter is full of many psychological and moral aspects, and most of them relate very well to things that are going on right now in the world. They all go hand in hand meaning that the aspects that were explained in The Scarlet Letter, can also be explained in the same way as they can be explained now. Although times were very different in the times where The Scarlet Letter took place, they are all relevant for what people have to say about certain things in today's world. The moral aspects of the Scarlet Letter are almost the same as moral aspects of today.
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.
Authors use character development to show how a person can change. Through a descriptive portrayal of a charter and their development they become real to the reader. A well-developed character stirs up emotions in the reader making for a powerful story. A person can change for better or worse and Nathaniel Hawthorne shows this thru the character development of Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter.
Guilt and shame haunt all three of the main characters in The Scarlet Letter, but how they each handle their sin will change their lives forever. Hester Prynne’s guilt is publicly exploited. She has to live with her shame for the rest of her life by wearing a scarlet letter on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is just as guilty of adultery as Hester, but he allows his guilt to remain a secret. Instead of telling the people of his vile sin, the Reverend allows it to eat away at his rotting soul. The shame of what he has done slowly kills him. The last sinner in this guilty trio is Rodger Chillingworth. This evil man not only hides his true identity as Hester’s husband, but also mentally torments Arthur Dimmesdale. The vile physician offers his ‘help’ to the sickly Reverend, but he gives the exact opposite. Chillingworth inflicts daily, mental tortures upon Arthur Dimmesdale for seven long years, and he enjoys it. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth are all connected by their sins and shame, but what they do in regards to those sins is what sets them apart from each other.
By marrying Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth has a negative impact on her life. Therefore, Thomas Foster’s idea that a vampire “...violates young women, leaves his mark on them, steals their innocence—and...usefulness...if you think ‘marriageability’...” (Foster 16), applies specifically to Roger Chillingworth, due to the matrimonial bonds that link him to Hester Prynne. For instance, when Hester Prynne recalls her pasts memories with her husband, she deliberates, “...it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth, than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side,” (Hawthorne 146). As noted in the beginning of The Scarlet
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.
The image of Roger Chillingworth is much like the image of pastor Dimmesdale: both characters sharpen one leading trait. But if in Arthur Dimmesdale we found some contradictions and changes in the nature which allowed us to judge him not as a single line diagram, then Roger is an absolute and complete embodiment of revenge and nothing more. We do not know what kind of person Chillingworth was before he returned to Boston, we didn’t know anything about his pastimes and position in life. All that we know is his fierce vindictive character. From the first page ,he speaks only of vengeance
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).
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.