In the American gothic novels The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, Roger Chillingworth and Captain Ahab are both the main manifestations of evil. Ahab and Chillingworth are very similar in how and why they are evil. Captain Ahab and Roger Chillingworth both become evil because something or someone wronged them. Ahab became evil after Moby Dick took his leg. Chillingworth became evil when he arrived in Boston and found that his wife had a child as result of an affair while he was presumed dead. Both of these men were consumed by these situations and saw them as something they must avenge. Ahab and Chillingworth are not inherently evil. Both men passively cause evil that affects others around them in
