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The importance of revenge as a theme
The importance of revenge as a theme
How does roger chillingworth change in the scarlet letter
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The villain in the Scarlett Letter is Roger Chillingworth. The definition of a villain is someone who's actions are evil but who's motives play an extremely important role into the story, but not in a positive way. The characteristics of a villain is someone who is determined, wounded, intelligent and some one who is untrustworthy. Most villains don't always just become evil it's something that drove them to that point, most of the time something tragic happened in their life and they look to seek some type of revenge, and will stop at nothing to get it. You find a lot that the intelligent villains are the one's who act as a friend or a kindhearted person to lure you into their trap. Not any villain has a good heart or is compassionate to someone’s feelings. They do what they have to do and they do not care who they hurt along the way of their mission or how they do so. Their mindset isn’t the same as ours and they think that their mindset is normal and they strongly believe evil if the root to all happiness. Even though there are villains in the real world today, most of them come from fictional stories. …show more content…
Sort of like Roger Chillingworth in the Scarlett Letter. Roger being so revengeful, this made his whole life miserable and the only way he could live was by seeking revenge on people. Chillingworth building all this anger and hate up inside him lead him to try to make Dimmesdales life absolutely
Pearl is an example of the innocent result of sin. All the kids make fun of Pearl and they disclude her from everything. She never did anything wrong, but everyone treats her like she committed the sin also. Pearl acts out against the children that make fun of her and acts like a crazy child. She cannot control the sins that her parents committed.
Literary villains are all around us. For instance, Voldemort from Harry Potter and Darth Vader from Star Wars. What makes a villain? They will go through anyone or damage anything to reach their goal. No matter how small or how tall they are, anyone can be a villain.
being a witch. This is a very evil thing in the eyes of the Puritans.
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
Dimmesdale, a Puritan minister, has had an affair (which he chose to do) with Chillingworth’s wife and he can’t come to the point where he can confess his sin to the public. Therefore, he is a secret sinner. By being this secret sinner Dimmesdale begins to physically and mentally break down. He begins to emotionally and physically beat himself up, “he whipped himself, starved himself as an act of penance until his knees trembled beneath him, and stayed up all night having long vigils and sometimes having visions” (Hawthorne 96). Dimmesdale’s sin has caught up with him and it is affecting his present along with his future; his secret sin is eating him up. He is beating himself up because he has kept it locked inside of him when he should have openness about his sin. Hester has openness about the sin they committed together, and it is not eating her up like it is eating up Dimmesdale. Not only has Dimmesdale been beating himself up, literally, over hi...
In a sense, revenge is slowly killing oneself and dragging another into death as well. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel The Scarlet Letter, evinces this reality in the eventual fate of Roger Chillingworth. Aroused by a vehement zeal for payback towards the Reverend Dimmesdale, Chillingworth drains the life out of himself, shown in his gradually decaying body and soul. With a raging desire for knowledge and a single-minded pursuit of retribution, Chillingworth’s demonic actions lead him to damnation, demonstrating the need for reconciliation in times of conflict. Chillingworth’s unquenched thirst for knowledge leads him to a state of vengeance, foreshadowing its eventual control over his actions.
Eventually coming to terms with his societal offense and accepting the love he shares for Hester and the product of his sin, Pearl, Dimmesdale decides to end his torment by revealing himself to society. However, as he relieves himself from the curse cast upon him, his body succumbs to his mental distress and physically weakness, leaving him a freed man as he takes his last breath. Dimmesdale inflicts himself with agony and distress as he chose to have an affair with Hester, but his ultimate downfall resulted because of his fear of social judgement and the consequences for committing such a crime. His choice to hide his dishonorable actions from society worsened his physical and mental health as he lived in constant angst of someone uncovering his scandalous secret and consequently leading to his passing away. As demonstrated by Oedipus and Dimmesdale, it is not one’s crime that leads them into misery; it is the emotional distress and guilt that tortures them and brings upon their greatest
Like all humans, Dimmesdale had to pay the consequences of his evil deeds, but he would later learn from his mistakes and change from fragile to powerful, and his strength would renovate him almost into a new person. Dimmesdale may have died soon but at least he was at ease with himself that he had not died as a coward but had been honest to God, himself, his family, and the townspeople.
Villains today are typically shown wearing dark colors, large capes, mean eyes, and maybe a pointy-nose. The villain has their evil cackle that suggests that they know what they are doing is evil, but they love doing the evil things. For the most part, they are never regretful of their actions. Take Gargamel, from the movie The Smurfs. Gargamel is the evil wizard and enemy of the smurfs, whose main goal is to destroy them. He wears a dark cape, has a pointy nose, and an evil laugh. Throughout the movie, he never changes his views on his actions or questions his reasoning for attempting, what we would call murder. In the end he is defeated by the hero of the movie, while still coming back in follow-up movies to attempt his goal again and again. This archetype is not quite the villain archetype presented through Claudius of the novel
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter has a very wide cast of characters, but settles upon three distinct main ones. These three characters are all very different, but still suffer from the same internal conflict regarding their relationships with one another. One theme can be associated with each individual character, but a single trait is common among all three. Love, fear, and revenge are all primary themes present in The Scarlet Letter, but no other emotion is as prevalent to the characters’ developments than their guilt. These themes give us a sense of how different, but also how similar, these characters are.
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.
A villain is truly just a victim whose story has not been told. This is clearly shown in The Creature in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” When the story states, “My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows and execration.” (Shelley, 134). The monster feels that people should judge him on his personality and emotions inside instead of his appearance on the outside. Frankenstein’s creature is truly just a victim of circumstance. No individual is born evil,
...scourse” (77). Dimmesdale as well, was greatly affected by the environment and by what was going on around him. Dimmesdale was accepted by society, but because he was greatly praised for being a “miracle of holiness” (125) he became greatly burdened and guilty. He was in a dilemma of wanting to tell all the townspeople about what he had done, yet he could not due to the fear that was inside of him. This pushed him to punishments in which he inflicted upon himself and always thinking about the incident pushed him to his limits mentally-seeing visions of his dead parents and Hester as they point a condemning finger at him along with judgmental looks in their eyes (127).
Revenge is the act of retaliating in order to get even with someone for the wrongs they have done. In the novel “The Scarlet Letter,” the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses Roger Chillingworth to reap revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale for his affair with his wife, Hester Prynne. Chillingworth becomes so devoted to revenge that is all his life revolves around. Chillingworth then devotes the rest of his life to taking revenge on Dimmesdale.
The third aspect of a tragedy is that there must be a conflict internally. There is definitely a conflict in Dimmesdale about his guilt. When Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are discussing why men keep their sins quiet, Dimmesdale becomes weak from the emotional pain that it brings him.