Scarlet Letter Good Vs Evil Quotes

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter a peculiar character whose real name is never revealed, poisons a man with a vicious bite. The reader may know him as Roger Chillingworth, the husband of Hester Prynne and self proclaimed physician, but a closer look at his appearance and actions will show how he fueled the fire of Hell. How Roger Chillingworth was the Devil.
Everything about Chillingworth was told through his appearance throughout the story as he became the embodiment of Hell’s tyrant. When Hawthorne first described Chillingworth he was said to be a man that “was small in stature” (Hawthorne 42) and had a bizarre pairing of English and Native American clothing. Along with his size and clothing, attention was drawn to how the

The Devil is said to act like a parasite as he sticks to man and tempts him to sin. Similarly, Hawthorne payed homage to this analogy of the Devil by creating the ninth chapter of his book “The Leech” and he talks about how Chillingworth took it upon himself to take care of Dimmesdale. In the chapter, none of the characters actually call Chillingworth a leech but the narrator told of the time Chillingworth spent with Dimmesdale “to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the seashore or in the forest” (Hawthorne 84). Hawthorne did this so the reader can connect Chillingworth to the title and connecting the character to a life sucking parasite and not a human. Consequently, the connection became vital to the story because after Chillingworth learned of Dimmesdale’s sin “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” (Hawthorne 95-96) which described how Chillingworth made it his soul’s purpose to bring the worst revenge to Dimmesdale that any man had

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). Most importantly, however, it is when Chillingworth realized who he has become and tells Hester “I have already told thee what I am! A fiend!” (Hawthorne 118) and he also says to “Let the black flower blossom” (Hawthorne 119-120). It was here in chapter 14 that Chillingworth admitted to being a “fiend” which means Devil and says to