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The evolution of characters of the scarlet letter
Character development in the scarlet letter
The Scarlet Letter Literary Devices
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Roger Chillingworth is Hester’s husband, and an eminent scholar. After seeing Hester in disgrace and refusal to identify her fellow sinner, Chillingworth vows to find out who Hester’s fellow sinner is and punish him, which he eventually does. As indicated by his name, Roger Chillingworth brings a “chill” to Dimmesdale’s life, freezing Dimmesdale’s soul and endlessly tormenting him. Chillingworth represents Unpardonable Sin, because he sets himself up as God, punishing Dimmesdale for sinning with his wife. Just as the others physically change to mirror their internal transformation, so too does Chillingworth. He becomes more demonic as the novel progresses, morphing from a curious scholar to a caricature of the devil. Even Hester pondered “whether
Roger Chillingworth’s suffering arose from a domino effect that he had no control of. Roger was merely a casualty of a sin that he had no partake in, but it turned his life upside down for the worse. The big punch that started Roger’s suffering was the affair between Hester and Dimmesdale. His suffering from this event was unlike the suffering it caused Hester and Dimmesdale as they suffered for their own sin, but Roger Chillingworth did not suffer from his own sin. Roger’s suffering comes directly from his own wife having a child with another man, an event he had no say or action in: “his young wife, you see, was left to mislead herself” (Hawthorne 97). Left all by herself Roger’s wife, Hester, mislead herself as no one was there to watch
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 ?
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.
Arthur Dimmesdale’s sin has made him believe that his ministry at the church has become better. Dimmesdale’s guilt has helped him become more in touch with his feelings which make his sermons more believable and therefore better. Before the guilt, Arthur Dimmesdale was a pretty boring man who spoke almost with no heart or feelings towards human emotions. As a man of the church he was losing people right before his eyes. His sin of adultery helped him feel what he couldn’t’ feel before. Dimmesdale 's words are now far more sensitive and deeper because he has the experience torturing him every day. Even with his fault, Arthur continued his life following Hester helping her the best he could as the guilt slowly sank in. Arthur Dimmesdale has now met Roger Chillingworth an English scholar. Chillingworth is Hester Prynne’s husband but agrees to not tell anyone of this because of the shame that he would get from his wife’s depravity. Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale become friends because of the bond they have with Chillingworth being Dimmesdale’s physician and medical caretaker with his health. Hester is the only one who knows both the identities of the two
Hester, talking with Chillingworth for the first time in seven years, is shocked at the changes in his appearance and his soul. Hawthorne writes, “There came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man’s soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast until it was blown into a momentary flame” (132). Chillingworth has become overtaken by his quest for revenge, and he has become a shell of his former self, “A striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil” (Hawthorne 132). He has ruined his life trying to get back at Arthur Dimmesdale, and he is resigned to the fact that it is his fate to live as a miserable, evil man set on exacting
This strategy exemplifies Hawthorne’s theme that sin must be taken responsibility for because being dishonest will only lead to more temptation. Chillingworth does admit to one of his blames of leaving Hester behind, but choosing his temptation over redemption has formed his obsession to making Hester lover’s suffer miserably with guilt, which fuels Roger’s vengeance. Secondly, Chillingworth’s internal conflict was illustrated through the changing of his appearance. Roger was once a kind, well respected, man of science; However, his vengeance has transformed his physical character into a devilish creature. When Hester and Pearl were visiting Governor’s Bellingham’s house, Hester notices the change over Roger’s features, “how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure misshapen” (93).
One of the various ways Chillingworth serves as the devil’s advocate is by being the antithesis of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the palpable Jesus figure of the narrative. Chillingworth keenly sets out to devastate Dimmesdale, as Hawthorne informs us when referring to Chillingworth's unearthing of Dimmesdale's secret, “All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving!” The capitalization of the words "Pitiless" and "Unforgiving" confirm that Chillingworth is Satan in human form. Symbolically, on an additional, more perceptible note, Chillingworth steals one of Dimmesdale's gloves and drops it on the scaffold in the middle of the town. The sexton returns it to Dimmesdale saying, "Satan...
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.
The world of Puritan New England, like the world of today, was filled with many evil influences. Many people were able to withstand temptation, but some fell victim to the dark side. Such offences against God, in thought, word, deed, desire or neglect, are what we define as sin (Gerber 14).
The audience experiences Roger Chillingworth in a dramatic yet critical way to justify change and retribution in one character as the consequence of cloaking deep sin and secrets. When first introduced in the story, the narrator refers to Chillingworth as “known as a man of skill” (97) through the point of view of the people in the Puritan town of Salem. He is brought into the story when the town was in a time of need of a physician to help the sickly Reverend Dimmesdale; his arrival is described as an “opportune arrival” because God sent a “providential hand” to save the Reverend. Society views Chillingworth as though as “heaven had wrought an absolute miracle” (97). The narrator feels when Chillingworth arrives in Salem he is good and has no intention of harm of others. Perhaps if the crime of the story had not been committed he would have less sin and fewer devils like features. Although this view of Chillingworth changes quickly, it presents the thought of how Chillingworth is before sin destroys him. Quickly after Chillingworth discovers Dimmesdale’s secret, his features and his character begin to change. The narrator’s attitude changes drastically towards the character from altering his ideas of the kind and intelligent persona to an evil being by using phrases such as “haunted by Satan himself” (101). The narrator portrays the people of the town believing Chillingworth is taking over the ministers soul in the statement “the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor minister’s eyes” (102). Throughout the book, Chillingworth ages exceedingly and rapidly. At the very end of the story, the narrator reveals another change in Chillingworth’s character; he searches for redemption by leaving Pearl a fortune a “very considerable amount of property” (203). By doing this, it shows
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).
In the final chapters of the story, Hester Prynne begins to clearly acknowledge and express her hatred of Roger Chillingworth. Hester comes to realize that she is not nearly as sinful as Chillingworth, despite her unfaithfulness and her public ignominy, and that she abhors him for his crimes against her. In the imagery in this scene, Hester demonstrates Chillingworth’s connections to death, opposition to virtuousness, and the Devil; which, in turn, serve to clarify Chillingworth’s position as Hester’s antagonist and moral opposite.
Where Chillingworth tortures Dimmesdale and Dimmesdale does not know and because his mind makes him feel guilt, he tortures himself psychologically and physically to deal with the pain. Dimmesdale feels guilty which leads him to carve an A into his chest and silently tortures himself and mentally ball himself up. When he finds out that Chillingworth was the one stalking him for seven years he gets furious and says, "We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!” (Hawthorne 183). Here, Dimmesdale feels that he has been violated and just wants to be forgiven in the eyes of God. Dimmesdale feels that Chillingworth is full of evil and revenge has clouded his brain from senses right and wrong. Dimmesdale claims that him and Hester’s sin have not made them as bad as Chillingworth. In his mind, however, he feels the need to do what is right so he does not feel influenced to do evil acts. When Dimmesdale dies after confessing, he feels complete because he lifts the weight of his sin off of his chest. When Chillingworth dies, however, it is quite the opposite, “–seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge” (244). In this quote, Chillingworth’s drive to fulfill his mission to find Hester’s lover has failed.
Dimmesdale illustrates himself as a hypocritical-clergymen, too cowardly to share the blame for his sin, while Chillingworth expresses his need for honour and respect along with his search for vengeance against who will soon find out to be Dimmesdale. Both men fell for Hester’s beauty; Chillingworth had a loveless marriage with her but suffered a loss of dignity when Dimmesdale fell for love and had an affair. They both regard the source of their issue with Hester, as revealed later on in the novel, but the main difference between the two is how the cope with their “pain.” Dimmesdale refuses to share the shame with Hester and become highly hypocritical and cowardly when questions Hester, and wants her to reveal his sin. On the other hand, Chillingworth changes his identity and, like Dimmesdale hides his secret that would only lead to shame, but he seeks revenge against Dimmesdale. Their journey began on the same path, but a shared incident separated their lines, but soon enough the ended at the same place; both men die in the
Once Chillingworth finds out that Arthur Dimmesdale is Hester’s co-sinner, he begins plotting revenge. Chillingworth gets the job as Dimmesdale’s physician and instead of giving him the correct vitamins and herbs, he feeds him toxic substances that are slowly killing him. As Hawthorne narrates, “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true” (203). This quote is especially true in the case of Chillingworth. It is evident that he is not a bad man; he is an ordinary man who has been blinded by his desire for revenge. Hawthorne describes Chillingworth as, “evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil” (158). Chillingworth used to be a loving, gentle husband, but has morphed into a revenge seeking, malicious