Roger Chillingworth and Injustice

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story based in the Puritan town of Boston about a young woman named Hester Prynne who committed adultery and was discovered by the Puritan government and religious authorities because she became pregnant and had a baby. Her punishment was 3 hours on the platform of the pillory at the market place, where no small amount of people watched her. She was also doomed to where a mark of her sin on her bosom, a scarlet letter A, for the rest of her life, which was certainly the greater of the two punishments. The man whom she committed adultery with, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, is a learned and highly renowned pastor. Everyone in the town loves him dearly and looks at him as a saint. Hester Prynne’s (ex) husband, returns from England where he stayed during Hester Prynne’s time of infidelity, and discovers what Hester did in his absence, after which he calls himself Roger Chillingsworth (his real name is never mentioned in the novel) and makes Hester swear never to reveal his true identity to anyone. Roger Chillingsworth later discovers Arthur Dimmesdale was the one whom Hester Prynne slept with in his absence, and then proceeds to take his revenge upon the frail mental state of the poor, tortured clergyman. Roger Chillingsworth became a truly evil and formidable enemy later. He became obsessed in seeking out justice against the man who wronged him, but in doing so he completely debased himself and dealt injustice against Arthur Dimmesdale.

A key element to the story is Arthur Dimmesdale’s weakened and ill state. Roger Chillingsworth is a skilled physician who is called in to help him. In doing so, he became Arthur’s close friend as well as his doctor. Chillingsworth even went so far as t...

... middle of paper ...

...that he did not realize the poor man had suffered too much already, that he still continued to psychologically attack him, shows that rather than justice, he is really getting the opposite, injustice. Kicking someone when they are down as he is doing cannot be just, but unjust and evil.

Thus, Roger Chillingworth searched for justice, but did not find it. He did everything he could to torment Arthur Dimmesdale but in doing so became, as he called himself, a fiend. He made himself the enemy of Dimmesdale and was hated by him. His search amounted not to a search for justice, but rather, a dehumanization of himself and injustice towards Dimmesdale. In the end Arthur Dimmesdale escaped his grip through death. Afterwards, with nothing to hold onto in life anymore, Roger Chillingsworth virtually withered into nothingness, and, as the book put it, vanished.