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Compare And Contrast Dimmesdale And Chillingworth

1021 Words5 Pages

Noah Brooks
Mrs. Garcia
Honors English
March 6, 2017
Scarlet Letter Essay There are no two characters who display a stronger opposition than Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Throughout the novel, the characters’ stark contrast acts as a constant reminder of this opposition. However, Chillingworth and Dimmesdale share many key similarities in their personalities, beliefs, and motivation. The differences and similarities the two exhibit in these aspects of their character drive them down comparable paths. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth’s personalities display some of the most obvious differences in their character. When Hawthorne introduces Arthur Dimmesdale, he refers to “Reverend Master …show more content…

For example, both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale’s actions are full of hypocrisies. Boston respects Dimmesdale for his moral integrity, yet he and Hester’s sin cause all the events of the novel. Chillingworth also demands that Hester to hide his true identity because Chillingworth “will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman,” (Hawthorne 57; ch.4). However, Chillingworth believes there is no dishonor in secretly torturing Dimmesdale. Both also believe that they are not at fault for their own mistakes. Chillingworth throughout the novel commits himself to a life of revenge and willingly commits acts of evil; nevertheless, Chillingworth blames Hester and Dimmesdale for making him into a villain (Hawthorne 132; ch.14). Dimmesdale believes that Hester is lucky because she wears “the scarlet letter openly upon [her] bosom,” and he suffers because he hides his guilt (Hawthorne 148; ch.17); although, any time Dimmesdale wished, he could reveal himself as Hester’s fellow adulterer. Both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale believe that they are exempt from responsibility which leads the two towards their

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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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Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, one of the protagonists of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, stands as a highly conflicted character. The source of his divide stems from the consequences of private sins, and is prevalent within the first paragraphs of Chapter 12, “The Minister’s Vigil,” where the narration chronicles Dimmesdale’s surroundings as he dream walks through the town in a state of limbo. He is portrayed as a model citizen who lacks moral imperfections to the general public yet suffers privately from the juxtaposition of his sins to his position within the community. In this specific passage, Hawthorne uses somber diction and imagery to illustrate Dimmesdale’s strife, while portraying his internal conflict through the formation

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Roger Chillingworth committed the greater sin in the Scarlet Letter. Chillingworth was a malicious man. After the news that Hester had committed adultery, he became more and more like the “Black Man.” He lied about being a doctor and his identity. Additionally, Chillingworth was the overall cause for Dimmesdale’s death, after seven years of torturing his mind.

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale commits a mortal sin by having an affair with a married woman, Hester Prynne. As a man of the cloth in Puritan society, Dimmesdale is expected to be the embodiment of the town’s values. He becomes captive to a self-imposed guilt that manifests from affair and his fear that he won’t meet the town’s high expectations of him. In an attempt to mitigate this guilt, Dimmesdale acts “piously” and accepts Chillingworth’s torture, causing him to suffer privately, unlike Hester who repented in the eyes of the townspeople. When Dimmesdale finally reveals his sin to the townspeople, he is able to free himself from his guilt.

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The reader is especially made aware of Dimmesdale's mental state in the eleventh chapter, “His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the church in which he had been born and bred” [150]. This suggests that he is racked with immense guilt and shame at the falsehood he is living and suggests that he is physically abusing himself as a result of this guilt. This directly contradicts Chillingworth's mental state of fury and vengeance that he falls deeper into as the story progresses. These two characters also hold striking incongruities as to what drives them onward as the account

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(125). Chillingworth was not always a bad man, as he says. Hester’s scandal and betrayal hurt Chillingworth deeply, to the point where he became evil and sought revenge. Chillingworth was humiliated, and Dimmesdale and Hester were the two people that had made him that way, which is why he sought

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Why isn’t the minister seen as a horrible person and Chillingworth is? In the Book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale, the Minister, has committed this terrible crime and some feel bad for him. This could be because Hester loves him; they are meant to be together. It’s interesting how Chillingworth can be seen as evil, but he is the one that was cheated on. He has mentally tortured Dimmesdale; obsessed with wanting him to suffer more that he has.

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“(Hawthorne 109). His moral stage continues to be at stage 1 “Obedience and Punishment Orientation” because his selfishness still makes an overall reflection on his personality. He is more concerned about his own feelings than everyone around him opposed to his morality at the beginning of the novel. He expresses signs of jealousy because Pearl called out for him. Next, at the beginning of Chapter 18 after Hester has declared to Dimmesdale that Chillingworth is her real husband and he becomes upset, eventually he forgives her and sees Chillingworth as the real sinner.

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Although Chillingworth does change, his opinion does not. What changes is how far he will go in order for Dimmesdale to be tortured, for the sole reason that he is Pearl’s father. Since Chillingworth’s ideas he could be considered a static character in the Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale views Chillingworth’s sin worse than his own. In the Scarlet Letter Hawthorne wrote “That old man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin.

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Hawthorne also uses Chillingsworth to highlight the dichotomy between the two mindsets of “good” and “evil”. While Hester and Dimmesdale never meant to cause harm to anyone in pursuit of their love, Dimmesdale specifically sought it out in pursuit of his

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Nora’s Odyssey: A Journey Through Mental Health and Suicide In the novel The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, the most significant issue presented throughout the text is suicide. Early in the story, we learn that the protagonist, Nora Seed, grapples with depression and anxiety. These struggles continue to build, and Nora finally cracks under the pressure of her poor mental health and decides to take her life. The rest of the novel bases itself upon Nora’s decision to die and her journey to a new beginning.

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He moves in with Dimmesdale, and claims he will care for him, but the public cannot see that his intention is to torture Dimmesdale. Hawthorne explains, “The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy” (126). He deliberately chooses to drive Chillingworth into insanity.

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Expectations of Dimmesdale to be “morally pure” and free of sin have created a divergence between Dimmesdale’s reality and the expectations of the public. This divide causes a corruption of Dimmesdale that smolders underneath the façade of the public 's perception and his reality. The conflict manifests itself in Dimmesdale as illness; a metaphor that provides a clear view on Hawthorne 's views of society: how divergence of an individual 's reality and society 's demands sickens and corrupts an individual. Dimmesdale 's isolation within his house allows him to escape others and atone for his sins by prayer, but Chillingworth 's influence turns it into a place of evil, forcing Dimmesdale to hide his secret. Chillingworth 's constant presence becomes a corruptive force in Dimmesdale 's life, and his constant presence damages Dimmesdale 's physical state.

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Chillingworth has a helpless victim, who doesn’t even realize who Chillingworth is yet, and he exercises his power over the minister with great enthusiasm. When Hester meets him in the forest, Chillingworth has a blackness in his visage and a red light showing out of his eyes, as if “the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smoldering duskily within his breast.” (pg.153). In seeking vengeance, he has taken on the devil's job. His obsession with revenge is what makes him the worst sinner and, therefore, a pawn of the devil so, it’s ironic that Hester meets him in the dark forest, a place the Puritans see as the home of the Black

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Chillingworth came back into town and learned his wife had conceived a child with someone. He then made up his mind to find the other adulterer and seek revenge on him. When Chillingworth learned that Dimmesdale was the other adulterer, he did everything he could to make Dimmesdale feel worse. This crime was directed at causing pain and suffering to another, making this a terrible sin (“Who”). Chillingworth and Dimmesdale committed two completely different sins.

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