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Chillingworth And Dimmesdale In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'

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Essay 2 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic tale, The Scarlet Letter, is an excellent piece of literature with many plot twists. In the beginning of the story the reader meets Hester, who is one of the main characters in the story. The reader soon learns that she has committed adultery and has received the scarlet letter,an identifying mark put on someone who has committed adultery, in front of the town. Once she has received that letter, her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who she thought was captured, shows up and finds her. Chillingworth quickly becomes the town doctor and soon seeks revenge to the one who committed adultery with Hester. Later in the story the reader discovers that Arthur Dimmesdale is the one who committed adultery with Hester; and Pearl, Hester’s daughter is Dimmesdale’s daughter too. As the reader gets farther into the story the reader may realize Chillingworth and Dimmesdale have a lot in common. Similarities play a very important role in …show more content…

Chillingworth is a good guy who has done everything right except for wanting revenge on Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale is also a good guy who has done everything right except for commit adultery with Hester. Their personalities are very similar in the way they act toward Hester and the way they speak to other characters in the story. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth actually are so close in their personalities that they become friends when Chillingworth becomes Dimmesdale’s doctor. They both open up to each other too about how they are unhappy. In addition, both of the men actually torture themselves in the book,“ This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture” (116). Their personalities aren’t the only thing that is similar in the story, their roles and functions in the story are similar

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Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both have secrets that make them look and act differently, their secrets affect their character and how they do their job. Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl but he doesn 't want to face the same humiliation as Hester did for his sins. Because of his secret he self punishes and fasts, he also preaches better than he did before although his health is failing. Chillingworth’s secret is that he was the husband of Hester while he was away, before she cheated on him. Chillingworth gets uglier and uglier driven by the need to get revenge on Pearl’s father.

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618 Words | 3 Pages

Therefore, the role Chillingworth obtains influences the plot of the story more so than other characters. Chillingworth seems to be a nice and genuine person throughout the beginning of the novel. He becomes Dimmesdale’s friend and helps take care of him throughout his illness. However, while he is being this nice person on the outside, on the inside he plots revenge against Dimmesdale and Hester.

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1041 Words | 5 Pages

Hester went to plead that the officials of the town leave Pearl in her care and not take her away to be raised by any one else. When it seems that Hester is losing this battle she asks Dimmesdale to speak in her defense which he does quite passionately. This desire to protect the mother and daughter bond of Hester and Pearl is what seems to draw Pearl to approach Dimmesdale and take “his hand in the grasp of both her own…” and lay “her cheek against it; a caress so tender…” (The Scarlet Letter, Chapter VIII) Dimmesdale’s defense and Pearl’s reaction are two cues that lead the reader to begin seeing the truth of who Pearl’s father

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1227 Words | 5 Pages

Hester and Dimmesdale have both committed adultery, but Hester accepts and embraces what has happened. Alternatively, for Dimmesdale, enduring seven long years of guilt and sin are required to get him to finally reveal the truth. Taking so many years to do so shows how

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660 Words | 3 Pages

Chillingworth is trying to find out who the father is and he comes to believe that it is Dimmesdale and manages to get into Dimmesdale’s head like he planned. Chillingworth drops hints to Dimmesdale to try to let him know he knows his secret. He talks about where he go his new medicine and calls Dimmesdale out on his lying in the process, “They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he has done better to confess during his lifetime” (Hawthorne 90). Here chillingworth is telling Dimmesdale that it is better to confess a sin while you are living, than to take that secret to the grave. Dimmesdale here reaches his breaking point and begins to have mental breakdowns and his illness grows

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667 Words | 3 Pages

He says that even though the other sinner would lose prestige in the town if his name were revealed, it would be better for him to confess his sin than it would be for him to "hide a guilty heart through life" (70). A cause of Dimmesdale’s outrageous pain is the gruesome Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth is Hester’s husband, and he finds out that Dimmesdale is her former lover. He gets his revenge by getting quartered close to Dimmesdale and being his doctor in order to torture Dimmesdale. Throughout the novel Chillingworth is compared to Satan because he; has a "writhing horror…like a snake" (63), a light glimmers in his eyes "like the reflection of a furnace" (133), and he even is said to be "Satan himself,," in disguise (132).

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727 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne tackles the issue of hiding sins by using Dimmesdale and Chillingworth as pawns to portray his view on sinful secrets. Dimmesdale’s main argument relies on divine powers, while Chillingworth focuses on nature in his argument. Dimmesdale argues that sometimes people want to confess their sins, but cannot because they fear they won’t be able to redeem themselves, so instead of confessing, they just leave their secrets for the divine powers to reveal. While Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are talking about the man from the grave, Dimmesdale points out the fact that “‘he earnestly desired [to reveal his sin] but could not’“ (123). He is able to state that so easily because the man he is actually

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711 Words | 3 Pages

Chillingworth is deceiving Dimmesdale by convincing him that he is his friend. “Come, good Sir, and my dearest friend, I pray you, let me lead you home!” (137). Chillingworth is persisting in his plan to destroy the man that destroyed his marriage with Hester. He is so good at acting like he is a friend that Dimmesdale is starting to let the only one who is planning to hurt him, in, and befriending him.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

This remark implies that Dimmesdale’s morality revolves around his self-conscience and what is right and wrong in the eyes of society and his social status as a clergymen. He demands Hester to exploit him for his actions in taking part of the adultery scenario with Hester. With respect to Kohlberg’s level of moral reasoning, he is at stage 4 “Maintaining the Social Order” for risking his entire reputation as a respected man in society over the action of one sin. Then, in Chapter 10 by now most of the Puritan society built suspicion of Chillingworth as a devil seeking to take ill Dimmesdale's soul. Since Chillingworth was first seen god like for his knowledge in medical care, he was truly valued by the Puritan society.

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878 Words | 4 Pages

The book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a complex novel that has underlying themes of sin and the responsibility for sin. The novel takes place in a Puritanical society, but two people, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, fornicate with each other, even though Hester is married to someone else. Only Hester is punished, so Dimmesdale keeps his guilt inside, not revealing it to anyone. Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, then proceeds to ruin Hester’s partner in crime, corrupting his soul and being the ultimate cause for his death. Hester, on the other hand, leads a relatively happy life after she had repented for her sin.

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An epic hero is a person who is admired for their courage, achievements, and qualities. Odysseus struggles to return to his home for ten years after the Trojan War. It took him a long time because Poseidon, the god of the sea, constantly hindered Odysseus from going back to his home. Although some argue that Odysseus is dishonest and prideful, the main character, Odysseus, in The Odyssey by Homer is an epic hero. Throughout his journey, Odysseus reveals his heroism by facing challenges and being respected.

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Chillingworth believes he exposes Dimmesdale’s sins, however, Dimmesdale ultimately sets himself free while standing on the scaffold with “a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory” (Hawthorne 228). Upon confessing his sins, Dimmesdale dies and leaves Chillingworth with nothing more to live for since his entire

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1404 Words | 6 Pages

Because of the effects that Dimmesdale’s sin has on Chillingworth, the town suffers as well. The betrayal of their pastor leads them to refuse to see the truth when he pleads for the public to see his guilt at the end of the novel, and his secrecy from the people that adore him is one of the slyest and vile parts of his sin. The blind faith that the public has in their reverend is mislead by his deceit, which causes his sin to grow to a scale that Hester’s never did. Dimmesdale also harmed Pearl, by not standing with her and Hester on the day they were condemned. When she is grown, she asks, “Doth

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865 Words | 4 Pages

As the novel symbolically represents Chillingworth as a leech and Dimmesdale as his patient it shows how Chillingworth functions. Chillingworth did not want Dimmesdale to die but for him to torture him for the rest of his life since he would have no greater purpose after Dimmesdale. This could see as reasoning why Chillingworth had the intention to board the ship Hester Dimmesdale and Pearl were on so he could get the gratification of always being there to torture

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We Ate the Acid: A Note on Psychedelic Imagery “Symbols – symbols every where. All along my journey they flashed forth the apocalypse of utterly unimagined truths.” – Fitz Hugh Ludlow Psychedelic art typically contains a number of recurring motifs. Examples include circles, spirals, eyes, concentric shapes, grids, landscapes, nudity, long hair, skeletons and mushrooms. Other common motifs are various kinds of non-human animals, vegetation, space scenery and mandalas.

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