The Scarlet Letter 2 Essay, Research Paper

“The Scarlet Letter”

Roger Chillinworth was once a good puritan who lived a good puritan life and he was married to Hester Prynne. Then he went to travel. When he came, instead of getting a good and warm welcome from his beloved wife he saw her standing on the town scaffold with a letter of shame on her chest. He stood there, completely wrecked and knew that his life as he knew it so far was all lost.

Ever since Roger Chillingworth s heart was broken and his life destroyed by Hester, he has deticated his life to revenge her and her adulterer, Dimmesdale. Being unable to return to his normal and good life practically destroyed and as he revenged them he becomes a devil (Chillingworth: I have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who made me so? It was myself cried Hester, shuddering.). That revenge is what made him try to prevent Dimmesdale from confessing in the last scaffold scene.

The scarlet letter had hurt Hester every day and every moment a lot, so Chillingworth let it do the avenge work alone without interfering (Hester: Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me? I have left thee to the scarlet letter replied Roger Chillingworth.). But for Dimmesdale he had a whole different plan. He came back to town as a different person with a different name. Now he was Roger Chillingworth (We don t know his name before the first scaffold incident), a well-appreciated and educated physician. He came to help Dimmesdale, who was very sick. He became his close physician and they became very close friends.

But the truth was that Chillingworth was constantly investigating Dimmesdale and reaching to the depth of his heart and prying his secrets and by that constantly hurting him. Dimmesdale was hurt because he lived a life of lies. To the world he was clergyman Dimmesdale – a wise man who was considered a saint, but in his heart he knew a different image of himself, as a sinner who is afraid to confess. Throughout the story it is hinted that if he had confessed he would have been relieved a long time ago and would not have been so sick.

Chillingworth knew that, and he knew that if Dimmesdale confessed, all of his revenge plans would not be affective Dimmesdale would have a clean conscience, or at least a better health. That is why in the last scaffold scene he tried to stop Dimmesdale from confessing his sin. Until the last moment in the story Chillingworth who became the devil, tried to avenge his lost life.