Vengeance In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In an article published by The Christian Science Monitor, commentator, Walter Rodgers describes revenge as America's new drug of choice. Revenge is not only a hot topic today but also during the time period of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Set in the 17th century in a Puritan settlement in Massachusetts, Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, follows Hester Prynne and the struggles she faces after her peers become aware of the act of adultery she has committed, which results in a child. Settlers demand to know the father of Hester's daughter but guilt ridden Hester refuses to divulge the identity of her lover. Roger Chillingworth, the man Hester originally married but had been captured by native tribes and thought to be dead was especially interested

Through the portrayal of Roger Chillingworth, Hawthorne illustrates that revenge envelops a person's life and consumes them in all aspects in the same way that culture today is fixated on revenge and the idea of getting even.
Hawthorne depicts Chillingworth as a man obsessed with vengeance who puts all his time and effort into making Dimmesdale's life a living hell. Chillingworth becomes so compulsively enticed with revenge. Similarly a current issue that exemplifies this notion is the Death Penalty. The death penalty is viewed as a way to get even with someone who has wronged another. Capital punishment by execution promotes a similar obsession with getting even in the same way that Chillingworth felt. For instance in some states inmates are put under 24 hours suicide watch and surveillance upto a week before their scheduled execution. Former prison guard at San Quentin Prison, Chuck Arnold recalls, “then instructing the condemned man to, as soon as he heard the cyanide drop into the acid, take a deep

A suicide attacker is someone who undertakes a terrorist attack knowing that he or she will die in the attack. Robert J Brym, a professor at the University of Toronto and a leading authority on the politics of intellectuals, focuses much of his studies on suicide bombers in places like Israel and Palestine. In Brym’s research he concluded “on the events precipitating suicide bombings, the motivations of suicide bombers, and the rationales of the organizations that support suicide bombings shows that Palestinian suicide missions are in most cases prompted less by strategic cost-benefit calculations than by such human emotions as revenge and retaliation.” A particular instance that gained a lot of publicity and coverage was the suicide bombing done by Hanadi Jaradat killing 20 people and wounding dozens of others. On October 4 of 2003, the 29-year-old lawyer detonated her belt of plastic explosives in Maxim restaurant in Haifa in Israel. Jaradats family was later interviewed by police revealing "She carried out the attack in revenge for the killing of her brother and her cousin by the Israeli security forces and in revenge for all the crimes Israel is perpetrating in the West Bank by killing Palestinians and expropriating their land." Jaradat may have got her revenge but it cost her the ultimate price. Hawthorne shows through