How Did Chillingworth's Character Change Throughout The Scarlet Letter

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, built and wrote the characters with positive and negative influences in the story. Throughout the story, Roger Chillingworth’s character were revealed and changed because of the influences from wanting revenge. Since he was Hester Prynne’s husband, Roger Chillingworth became the antagonist when he realized his wife had committed adultery. He decided to take revenge on the man who Hester loves. Even though he kept the man suffered, his action also showed positive influence toward his wife and Pearl later on. Regardless, Roger Chillingworth was mostly filled with evilness desiring to have revenge on his wife’s lover. Being the evil character in this book, Roger Chillingworth’s plan to revenge had negative impact …show more content…

In the beginning, he spotted his wife, Hester Prynne on the scaffold with an unknown baby wrapped on her arms and the scarlet letter A pinned on her chest that caused him into a “man’s faculty of transforming into a devil” (130). As a husband of Hester, he will be obviously be enraged that another man was her lover. So Chillingworth decided to take revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale, the true father of baby Pearl, by becoming his physician and living under the same roof without him knowing he is the husband of Hester. Near the end, Chillingworth was enough of a devil to even lie to Dimmesdale by exclaiming “Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you!” when he was about to reveal the truth of his sin and end Chillingworth’s evil revenge (194). Truthfully, what he wanted was to make him suffer longer. Sometimes, something good comes out of these