Chillingworth's Revenge Quotes

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

He says to Hester, “Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?” (pg. 70). Later on, Chillingworth vows seek her lover, “I shall seek this man, as I have sought truth in books,” Chillingworth vows to Hester. “Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!” (pg.70). Hester realizes that Chillingworth means to enact revenge, saying, “thy acts are like mercy...but thy words interpret thee as a terror!” (pg.71). A terror is exactly what this lust for revenge makes Roger Chillingworth. As the novel progresses, we watch as he is devoured by his own vengeance and need to tear Dimmesdale

He was once a thoughtful man, wanting little for himself, but now she tells him that he is an evildoer, bent on Dimmesdale's destruction. She says, “You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death.” (pg.154). 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