Essay Evil Haunts Revenge

Submitted By whynot1232
Words: 739
Pages: 3

Evil Haunts Revenge Revenge is not a feeling that you are born with, you mentally create it when you feel nothing is being done to someone who has wronged you. Roger Chillingworth is a character who wants revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale because he feels Dimmesdale was not instinctive, his want for revenge started when he saw Hester Prynne on the scaffold with her infant daughter in her arms. Once Chillingworth began to figure out what was going on in the town, his reprisal began to grow, he began persecuting Dimmesdale by playing with his inner guilt and eventually began to lead himself into an evil lifestyle. Roger Chillingworth entered into town to see a view of his wife on the scaffold with a symbol of her sin on her breast and in her arms. Automatically the reader gives remorse, but is given a different description. Chillingworth's description of his "first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous" (Hawthorne 110). He was such a surprise to many because he was a physician, the Puritans did not have many. Yet even before giving this description Hawthorn states how he was a man that was "elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld a woman" (108). After being given such a description it should not be surprising on how he starts his plot of revenge for Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale's inner guilt for his sins began growing rapidly as Chillingworth persecuted him. Chillingworth knew what he wanted to do, at the beginning of the novel, he did not know who it was, but he knew he could not risk letting people know his true identity, as Hester's husband. In order to make sure he made Hester swear that "thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come" (71). He did this because if the towns people ever found out, who is was, he would be looked downed upon, then he would not be able to get revenge, so he went undercover. Over a decent period of time he moves in with Dimmesdale to look over him, and to treat him. He also begins to act out his vengeance be starting a conversation by asking the question "is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you for that scarlet letter on her breast?" (123). He is implying that there is someone else to blame beside Hester and that someone else needs to get punishment as well. During Chillingworth's struggle to find vengeance on Dimmesdale, he began obsession immensely over this. The revenge and how bad he wanted it nearly turned evil. Chillingworth was slowly progressing towards an evil lifestyle, he didn't know what would have happened until he lost what his strive for revenge was.