Hester Prynne And Chillingworth's Reaction To The Scarlet Letter

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Sequoia Martell-Tash
Honors Essay

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter was set in the 1640’s at the very beginning of the Colonial Age. This novel, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells the story of a young woman who is shamed by her community and deemed an ‘adulterer’, which at that point in history was one of the greatest sins one could perform. This novel is filled with conflicts: personal conflicts, conflicts of strained relationships, and a greater conflict within society which analyzes social construct and the overall ideas of right and wrong. The entirety of this book is based around the dynamics between Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, throwing these characters into high pressure situations in order to genuinely show the essence of their nature. Chillingworth, Hester’s original husband, is a twisted man who thrives off of revenge, which is shown indefinitely in his crooked obsession with Dimmesdale: Hester’s co-adulterer.
Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth met in Europe, where they both originated from. When Hester and Roger met, …show more content…
Before the need for revenge took over Chillingworth’s life, he was a simple scholar, only something as overbearing as these circumstances could lead a man to personifying Satan himself. Chillingworth knew what he was doing to Dimmesdale on a very deep level. Chillingworth, at the beginning of his relationship with Dimmesdale as a doctor, always somehow assumed that his mental and physical health descent was somehow connected to Hester Prynne, but he had no proof. In a conversation that Hester and Chillingworth have about his revenge towards Dimmesdale, Hester acknowledges that Dimmesdale better off be dead than having to deal with the torment that Chillingworth was deliberately putting Dimmesdale through. Chillingworth replies
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