Roger Chillingworth In The Scarlet Letter

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Prompt: In a five-paragraph essay, trace the development of Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne AND explain how he is perceived by other characters in the story. In the book The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth is portrayed a few different ways throughout the story. As the story develops, Chillingworth's personality begins to be viewed differently. In the beginning when Chillingworth shows up, he is perceived as the poor man whose wife cheated on him, but that quickly changes. In the first chapter he shows up in, Hester is with Pearl being judged on the scaffold. In this time, the readers start to feel bad for Chillingworth. Hester recognized Chillingworth because of his uneven shoulders, and this made the judgement even harder. The reason people feel for him, is because he has just found out his wife cheated on him while he was away. They also found that Chillingworth was with the Indians, and that is why he was gone from Hester for four years. In the next few chapters, Chillingworth upholds his false identity and keep everyone from getting suspicious about him. He did this by becoming the town’s doctor, and was quickly accepted because he was they only doctor they had. He picked on his learnings from the Indians during his time with them. One day when Hester and Pearl were sick, they sent …show more content…

This is where the readers begin to see the real Chillingworth. In this part of the book, Chillingworth wants revenge on Dimmesdale for getting Hester pregnant and making her wear the “A” on all of her clothes. Chillingworth was secretly happy whenever Dimmesdale became ill, and he was glad to see him in pain. Chillingworth maintained a “soft spot” for Hester through the entire thing until Hester realized he wanted revenge on DImmesdale. They had an argument over him wanting revenge, this caused the townspeople to become suspicious of him as

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