Comparing Evil In Moby Dick And The Scarlet Letter

Much of American Gothic literature shares the same theme: evil. Two popularliterary works, Moby Dick by Herman Melville and The Scarlet Letter by NathanielHawthorne, share the theme of evil. The evil in the work Moby Dick is in Captain Ahab,the captain of a whaling ship, whose only goal was to kill the white whale, Moby Dick,no matter the obstacles or consequences. Evil in The Scarlet Letter was in the form ofRoger Chillingworth, Hester Prynne’s presumed dead husband. His goal was to cause asmuch pain through guilt to Arthur Dimmesdale, the undisclosed father of Hester Prynne’schild. Ahab and Chillingworth, both manifesting evil, had goals and desires based ontheir own selfish feelings.Revenge is a common occurrence in literature, an occurrence that Moby Dick andThe Scarlet Letter have in common. …show more content…
Captain Ahab wants toinflict revenge on Moby Dick, and dies while doing so. He succeeds in harpooning thewhale, but his desire drives him to mount the whale by grabbing onto the harpoon. Hebecomes entangled in the ropes, holding him to Moby Dick, and when the whale goesunder, Ahab drowns, ultimately because of his yearning for revenge. Chillingworth’sdesire was to drive Dimmesdale to death by making him feel extreme guilt. When hefinally drives him to the brink of death, Dimmesdale publicly confesses his sin,alleviating him of his guilt, and dies immediately after. With his death came the death ofChillingworth’s drive to live, his sole purpose of revenge lost.The inability to do anything but the goal in mind is a quality that may seemadmirable depending on the situation, but not when the goal is to accomplish an