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Theme Of Chillingworth In The Scarlet Letter

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Every story with a protagonist must have an antagonist. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The character of Chillingworth portrays the stereotypical villain. He exuberates the proper qualities that a typical villain would have. Chillingworth unsightly appearance and actions reflect how the world sees him. as well Chillingsworth traits that make him a villain include vengeful, chilling, and vindictive. These traits both directly and indirectly affect the protagonists in The Scarlet Letter. Chillingsworth actions contribute to the scarlet letters theme of “suffering in silence” because of his relentless and vengeful attacks that promote despair. Chillingworth directly attacks Dimmesdale psychologically by “[p]rying into his recollections, …show more content…

Hester suffered in prison due to her crime of adultery. Hester saw Chillingworth while the crowd in the marketplace publicly punished and shamed her in which Chillingworth made Hester watch from the scaffold while “he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips" (Hawthorne 57). This action promoted Hester's silence to keep his identity a secret. Hester also suffered when a threat of Pearl, being taken out of her custody, became apparent and was to be given to Dimmesdale. She yelled and screamed in the courtroom, “I will not lose the child!” (Hawthorne 104). Hester most excruciating pain came from losing the custody of her child. During the period when Pearl’s custody was threatened to be given to Dimmesdale, Chillingworth then at this time was prescribed as Dimmesdale’s doctor. Hester knew what kind of torment Chillingworth would inflict upon Dimmesdale, which would be the infliction of more psychological pain. The occurrences of a threat towards Hester to lose custody of her child and her punishment for adultery were directly brought upon by Chillingworth. Hester did not love Chillingworth anymore and she could not love him ever . Her thought process on Chillingworth is why she committed adultery. Losing custody of Pearl was due to the punishment inflicted on her because of her disloyalty to

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Hester Prynne is punished in front of the whole Puritan community, with her daughter Pearl. Together Hester holds baby Pearl in her arms while being publicly ridiculed on a scaffold in the center of the town. To escape the constant mockery from the society, she can easily leave and move to a place where no one knows her sin, and where she would be free to live without punishment. Hester knows she has done wrong though, so she decides to stay where her sin takes place and where her punishment is established. Hester believes “The torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul and work our another purity than that which she had lost.”

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Hawthorn Uses revenge to illustrate Chillingworth's decline of death. Roger Chillingworth has one main reason to get revenge and that reason is Dimmsdale, the Minister who stole his wife. Roger Chillingworth has spent 7 years of his life he will never get back just to get revenge on Dimmesdale who at the moment could care less as long as he is innocent in all of this. Chillingworth is wanting revenge more than anything in the world, His face has become as terrible looking as his soul just trying to get revenge, revenge is aging him very quickly and had caused Roger to look like a demon. Roger Chillingworth is doing everything is his power to try to get Dimmsdale to tell his big secret but Dimmesdale is doing everything is his power to keep

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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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At first Chillingworth is portrayed through the introduction as a civil man, almost feel sorry for him for the fact that his wife cheated on him, and that she is now imprisoned, Hester even calls him, “the Black Man that haunts the forest round about [the town],”(Hawthorne 94), however, these words foreshadow the dive to insanity Chillingworth later takes after he sets his sights on revenge. Although Chillingworth’s arrival to Massachusetts is not a happy one, the reader can’t feel bad for Chillingworth because during his conversation with Hester, Chillingworth didn’t approach Hester with the intent on being a good husband, but rather as a physician. The lack of love Chillingworth displays to Hester, sheds light onto the how riddled with guilt Chillingworth really is, the mere opposition to comfort her, provides Chillingworth’s first step towards his mental downfall. Some people may argue that Chillingworth never saw a downfall into his own mental state, and that he was passing the punishment that Dimmesdale had deserved. However, the punishments that Dimmesdale was receiving was more torture than anything else, which exemplifies the civility he has lost.

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She receives three punishments from the townspeople, who claim they will free her from her sin. The community orders Hester to go to jail, wear a scarlet letter on her chest, and stand on the town scaffold for hours. Hester wears her scarlet letter proudly on her chest, and endures much suffering because of her public ridicule. Hester is “kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement” after she was released from prison, but she chooses to stay (Hawthorne 71). Later, Hester’s child, Pearl, symbolizes the Puritan view of Hester.

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Chillingworth shows no restraint in persecuting Dimmesdale to achieve his ends. When he arrives in the town he finds that a man has committed adultery with his wife, which “[leads] him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy.” From that moment, Chillingworth swears to exact his retribution. He forms a plan which will only satisfy his selfish desire to destroy the man that wronged him.

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