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How Does Captain Ahab Portray Evil In The Scarlet Letter

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Comparison of Chillingworth and Captain Ahab The American gothic novel, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, portrays evil in the character of Roger Chillingworth; he is a fake doctor who is sought on bringing revenge to the person who committed adultery with his wife. Another American gothic novel is Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville. This story shows that Captain Ahab’s revenge on the whale that took his leg can cause more harm than good. Roger Chillingworth and Captain Ahab both portray evil in these great American classics, and both have many similarities on how they show evil to the people around them. Roger Chillingworth is first seen in tattered, unruly clothes and dirty skin with the town at the scaffolds watching Hester …show more content…

Although you do not see his face, Captain Ahab first appears when he walks out of his house with his wooden leg in the middle of the night. You then see his wife and son cowering in a corner because of the fear they share of him. Once out at sea on the Pequod, Captain Ahab disappears for several days and neglects his duties as captain to direct the ship’s crew. He relies on his first, second, and third mate to make sure things run smoothly while on the water. When Captain Ahab finally appears, he makes the harpooners take a blood promise to find and kill Moby Dick. Throughout the story, Captain Ahab directs the ship into harsher conditions and away from the whale oil profits to instead follow the path of Moby Dick in hopes of getting his kill. Even when the ship’s supplies get low and whale oil depletes, Captain Ahab continues to move forward in finding Moby Dick. The captain’s resentment toward the gargantuan white whale eventually gets him and almost all of his crew killed. His actions prove that revenge can blind one’s sane thoughts and instead make rash decisions that lead to be harmful to

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To some this in an unneeded, extraneous line in the story that adds no real substance. To others, this provides insight into the characters of Nurse Ratched and Mr. McMurphy. The white whale refers to Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In Moby Dick, the whale wreaks havoc and is relentlessly pursued by Captain Ahab. In the end it can be argued that Moby, the whale, and the Captain are both defeated, paralleling the story with Nurse Ratched and Mr. McMurphy.

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Obsession warps minds and makes the obsessor blind to the possible, or even the current, consequences. Nathaniel Hawthorne shows the negative effects of obsession through the character Roger Chillingworth, widely recognized as the villain of The Scarlet Letter. Roger Chillingworth shows how obsession entirely destroys the human soul by inspiring extreme actions, wasting away the body, and clouding the mind;

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After Chillingworth arrived it was said that the people noticed “there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon him” (Hawthorne 87). The people of the town saw that Chillingworth had become this monstrous looking man without feeling. Not only do these people notice the appearance, but they started the rumor “that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth” (Hawthorne 87-88). The people of the town, though superstitious, believed Chillingworth to be the Devil and Hester noticed that “In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office” (Hawthorne 116).

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The Scarlet Letter Essay “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! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!” (Hawthorne 111). Without doubt, throughout The Scarlet Letter Roger Chillingworth is been a very flat character in the sense that even from his first appearance in chapter three until chapter twenty-four when he drops dead his mission was to get revenge on Pearl's father.

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In the romantic novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Roger Chillingworth as the prime example of pure evil. Chillingworth is characterized as a symbol for evil because Hawthorne illustrates him and his thoughts as being associated with the devil and Hell. Through Hawthorne’s descriptions, Chillingworth’s malevolent ideas and eagerness to expose Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale are revealed. Consequently, Chillingworth serves as the antagonist in the novel because of his plot to seek vengeance on and torment Dimmesdale. Through the use of figurative language and syntax, Chillingworth’s description and his actions symbolize him as a mysterious and wild evil doing the devil’s bidding.

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The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses the relentless character, Mr. Roger Chillingworth, to describe the result of being resentful and unforgiving to his wife’s secret lover, Reverend Dimmesdale. Chillingworth is the character who represents the definition of evil in the novel. The Scarlet Letter also vividly describes how Chillingworth became self-absorbed with vengeance and how vengeance changed him for the worst. Throughout the novel, The Scarlet Letter gives evidence of a clear picture of a life consumed by vengeance resulting in obsession over committing evil acts which leads to Chillingworth self-destruction. In the Scarlet Letter the definition of vengeance based off of Chillingworth’s character is the act of recovering

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Melville’s life had a great impact on the story Moby Dick. In the same way, he had a bad leg on one of his journeys, he creates Captain Ahab with a broken leg. Primarily, by reading Shakespeare’s plays he creates the setting and language of the novel. In the same manner, he uses his dramatic technique in creating Ahab as a tragic hero villain.

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The Monstrous and Malicious Man It is human nature to feel the dire urge to act out revenge on the ones who hurt us, but how far is one willing to go to make someone feel the same sufferable pain? Roger Chillingworth, a doctor, a husband, and a revenge seeking monster who was out to destroy someone who indirectly hurt him. Roger Chillingworth, of The Scarlet Letter, becomes obsessed with avenging the sin between his wife, Hester and the town’s well respected minister, Dimmesdale, that he takes on a Devilish form that reveals his true evil intentions. Roger Chillingworth develops into a monstrous character as the novel goes on, but he was not this way until after hearing the news about his estranged wife. Chillingworth’s first appeared at

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As the journey goes on the crew ends up in the freezing waters of the Arctic, because Captain Ahab insists on chasing the Moby Dick. By this point, the barrels that stored the oil are rotted and all the oil they collected is now wasted. Ahab is keeping the crew “hostage” until they kill Moby Dick. They finally see Moby Dick and Captain Ahab kills himself and all the crew while trying to kill the white whale. Captain Ahab was a selfish obsessed man who only looked out for

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The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story about a woman, Hester Prynne, who committed adultery with the reverend, Arthur Dimmesdale, which will not confess his sin. A physician, Roger Chillingworth, takes care of him on the outside, but behind closed doors Chillingworth is keeping Dimmesdale in his pain. Because the man will not confess his sin he tortures himself, which causes physical and mental illnesses. Another American gothic novel, Moby Dick, was writing from the author's, Herman Melville , experience on a whaling ship. The wailing ship’s captain is Captain Ahab.

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There are many whales in the sea, but this particular whale called Moby Dick is the desirable catch for the whalers and captain due to its legendary proportions. In the novel, Moby Dick, it offers an allegorical story of humanity’s dangerous search for meaning. The monstrous, white whale represents that “meaning” humans have been hunting for their entire lives, but at the end one will discover that one can do so much but still end up not finding their answer. The entire plot to Moby Dick is directed towards the final confrontation between Ahab, his crewman and the White whale. At the end, the whale wins the fight and the rest of the crew on ship all die, demonstrating the fact that the whale cannot be defeated, hence signaling how the laws

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However, despite being his most famous novel, only three thousand copies of the book were sold while Herman was still living(“Herman Melville”). By the 20th century the novel was reborn as literary analysts began to comment on the excellence presented by the story and many copies began selling as it became a must for high school curriculums all over the United States As one digs deep into Moby Dick, one would get the feeling of how life on the high seas was and the excitement that a sailor’s life was comprised of. Herman wrote the novel in first person point of view as a sailor on the whaling ship just as he had been during his voyages. This helps to add reality to a story that was somewhat unbelievable to people when it was first published.

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