Ideas and opinions differ from person to person, as does the interpretation of colors. There are those individuals that see the word in black and white, a wide variety of colors , or live in a world of a single shade of hue. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous work, The Scarlet Letter, is a world, complete with countless colors. Some that do recur quite a bit, is black and red/scarlet. Hawthorne continuously affiliates the color black with Roger Chillingworth, a man who develops from a kind scholar to an obsessed barbarian. Whereas, Hester, is most known for her glowing scarlet letter that she was forced to wear because of her sinful affair with a man who is to be revealed far into the book. Chillingworth represents this color for the sole reason
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The first person to question “the Black Man, that haunts the forest about [them]...”(53) is Hester and the Black Man she refers to is the devil. The color black is closely associated with evil. Hawthorne also describes “Roger Chillingworth [who uses] his victim for [his] own purposes, and had substituted for his black devices. “(96). The victim Hawthorne is referring to is Minister Dimmesdale, which he has chosen to torture mentally because of the affair he had with Chillingworth’s wife, Hester. The “black devices” used in the text implies that he is involved with malicious acts or in this particular time period witchcraft or black magic. Hester desires nothing more than to stop the “ black flower [from blossoming] as it may”(119-120) as the “black flower” illustrates the growing wickedness in Chillingworth. His malevolent intentions only began when he returned to Hester only to find her on the scaffold with a child who was not his. As the darkness in him develops as he grows closer to the Minister and is trusted by the higher ranking men of the town. Little do any of them know he has only one intent; he will go out of his way to find Pearl’s father and mentally torture him in Hester’s eyes to make her feel …show more content…
The effect that black and red has in the story creates the contrast between two completely different type of people. There were many instances where Hester, the wearer of the scarlet letter would ask Chillingworth whether he was “like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about [them]...” (ch 6) or if his true identity resembles that of the devil. Throughout the story, the devil is always referred to as the “black man,” because of its negative significance and meaning amongst the Puritans. Even as Dimmesdale aims to part from this community, he attempts to justify the proper meaning of “the scarlet letter [, that it needs] not burn into the bosom of [this] fallen woman”(ch 17) because his point of view replaces
The first person to question “the Black Man, that haunts the forest about [them]...”(53) is Hester and the Black Man she refers to is the devil. The color black is closely associated with evil. Hawthorne also describes “Roger Chillingworth [who uses] his victim for [his] own purposes, and had substituted for his black devices. “(96). The victim Hawthorne is referring to is Minister Dimmesdale, which he has chosen to torture mentally because of the affair he had with Chillingworth’s wife, Hester. The “black devices” used in the text implies that he is involved with malicious acts or in this particular time period witchcraft or black magic. Hester desires nothing more than to stop the “ black flower [from blossoming] as it may”(119-120) as the “black flower” illustrates the growing wickedness in Chillingworth. His malevolent intentions only began when he returned to Hester only to find her on the scaffold with a child who was not his. As the darkness in him develops as he grows closer to the Minister and is trusted by the higher ranking men of the town. Little do any of them know he has only one intent; he will go out of his way to find Pearl’s father and mentally torture him in Hester’s eyes to make her feel …show more content…
The effect that black and red has in the story creates the contrast between two completely different type of people. There were many instances where Hester, the wearer of the scarlet letter would ask Chillingworth whether he was “like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about [them]...” (ch 6) or if his true identity resembles that of the devil. Throughout the story, the devil is always referred to as the “black man,” because of its negative significance and meaning amongst the Puritans. Even as Dimmesdale aims to part from this community, he attempts to justify the proper meaning of “the scarlet letter [, that it needs] not burn into the bosom of [this] fallen woman”(ch 17) because his point of view replaces