Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, focuses its attention around many predominant themes, which generate innumerable interpretations. Motifs such as adultery, revenge, and forgiveness are prevalent within the novel based on Puritan locale. The characters of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, each exhibit behaviors, which have been placed upon them by the burdens in their everyday lives. The Scarlett Letter focuses on the puritanical judgment of what is deemed a sinful act and how this same act affects the three aforementioned characters who share this secret in an entirely different way. Hester Prynne impresses the reader by proving that she is unmoved by the public’s judgment, and this ability
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His intent in the novel is revenge, which is all-encompassing and prevents him from acceptance and a happy life. “Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy” (Hawthorne 96). His vengeance can be considered as a greater sin on humanity than the loving affair of Hester and Dimmesdale. The reader observes Chillingworth’s deterioration from an altruistic wise intellectual to a demented retaliator deprived of any feeling for mankind. Chapter 14 provides dialogue of Chillingworth’s sickening threats and his understanding of the change within him: “But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged! —and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!" (Hawthorne 118). He continues to control Hester and Dimmesdale through his distorted joy in the emotional and mental anguish he causes them. His plan to accompany them to Europe on the voyage, leads to his infamous line, “Thou hast escape me”, when Dimmesdale professes his side of the secret. Roger Chillingworth chooses his own reaction and action, which directly leads to his downfall. In other words, it was his own decision to have stayed and lived through his self-made
His intent in the novel is revenge, which is all-encompassing and prevents him from acceptance and a happy life. “Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy” (Hawthorne 96). His vengeance can be considered as a greater sin on humanity than the loving affair of Hester and Dimmesdale. The reader observes Chillingworth’s deterioration from an altruistic wise intellectual to a demented retaliator deprived of any feeling for mankind. Chapter 14 provides dialogue of Chillingworth’s sickening threats and his understanding of the change within him: “But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged! —and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!" (Hawthorne 118). He continues to control Hester and Dimmesdale through his distorted joy in the emotional and mental anguish he causes them. His plan to accompany them to Europe on the voyage, leads to his infamous line, “Thou hast escape me”, when Dimmesdale professes his side of the secret. Roger Chillingworth chooses his own reaction and action, which directly leads to his downfall. In other words, it was his own decision to have stayed and lived through his self-made