roger chillingworth character analysis essay

Study Guide for The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter study guide contains a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. About The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter Summary Character List Glossary Themes Read the Study Guide for The Scarlet Letter Essays for The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Little Human A Incarnate Perception Blanketed by Passion Original Sin Hawthorne's Witch-Baby in The Scarlet Letter Hester's Role as Both the Sinner and Saint View our essays for The Scarlet Letter Lesson Plan for The Scarlet Letter About the Author Study Objectives Introduction to The Scarlet Letter Relationship to Other Books Notes to the Teacher View the lesson plan for The Scarlet Letter E-Text of The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter e-text contains the full text of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. INTRODUCTORY. THE CUSTOM-HOUSE CHAPTER I. THE PRISON-DOOR CHAPTER II. THE MARKET-PLACE CHAPTER III. THE RECOGNITION CHAPTER IV. THE INTERVIEW Read the E-Text for The Scarlet Letter Wikipedia Entries for The Scarlet Letter Introduction Plot Major themes Publication history Critical response View Wikipedia Entries for The Scarlet Letter.
Oh, Chillingworth. Of course you would choose such a frosty pseudonym when you're getting ready to track down your wife's lover and persecute him in secret for seven years. That's just the kind of guy you are.10 0'Clock Scholar You have to give him credit for perseverance, at least. He did love Hester at one point, so much that he managed to convince her to marry him, even though he was (1) old, and (2) a scholar and intellectual. Later he regrets this, calling it a folly to want to marry a beautiful young woman, but too bad, so sad: he doesn't regret it in time to stop three lives from being ruined. (Also, dude: if you've just married a young pretty wife, what are you doing sending her across the ocean by herself and then not showing up for two years?)And now, Shmoopers, brace yourselves for Roger Chillingworth in action:Yea, woman, thou sayest truly! cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense,—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this,—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. 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.
Roger Chillingworth, unlike Hester and Dimmesdale, is a flat character. While he develops from a kind scholar into an obsessed fiend, he is less of a character and more of a symbol doing the devil's bidding. Once he comes to Boston, we see him only in situations that involve his obsession with vengeance, where we learn a great deal about him. Hawthorne begins building this symbol of evil vengeance with Chillingworth's first appearance (.. dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth.. ) in the novel by associating him with deformity, wildness (the Indians), and mysterious power. Having just ended over a year of captivity by the Indians, his appearance is hideous, partly because of his strange mixture of civilized and savage costume. Even when he is better dressed, however, Chillingworth is far from attractive. He is small, thin, and slightly deformed, with one shoulder higher than the other. Although he could hardly be termed aged, he has a wrinkled face and appears well stricken in years. He has, however, a look of calm intelligence, and his eyes, though they have a strange, penetrating power, are dim and bleared, testifying to long hours of study under lamplight. The reader feels a bit sorry for Roger Chillingworth during the first scaffold scene when he arrives in Massachusetts Bay Colony and finds his wife suffering public shame for an adulterous act. At that point, however, he has several choices; he chooses revenge. His rude awakening is described a second time in Chapter 9 when Hawthorne calls him a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. What should have been a warm and loving homecoming after being apart from his wife has become terrible. Chillingworth.
Secrets In The Scarlet Liars, hypocrites, frauds, cheaters, adulterers, imposters, sinners, and gossipers, no one would ever suspect these types of people live in the perfect Puritan town of Boston. At first glance Boston seems as if it’s a city set on a hill because everyone is so righteous and religious. It seems like everyone in the town is perfect besides Hester. She is criticized and looked down on because she has a scarlet letter “A” on her chest. Even though Hester is the only one with a visible scarlet letter, many other hypocritical citizens deserve scarlet letters on their chests for something or another. For example, Roger Chillingworth should have worn a letter “K” on his chest for kleptomaniac because he is constantly trying to steal Reverend Dimmesdale’s life away. He is so obsessed with ruining his life it seems like he has a mental disorder.The first signs of Roger’s kleptomaniac behavior were first recognized when some citizens noticed something ugly and evil taking over his face. Roger is constantly with Reverend Dimmesdale wherever he goes; its like they are attached at the hip. First he tries to become friends with the Reverend and then he begins to pry into him like a bloodthirsty leech. Rogers pesters him all the time with questions about guilt and confession that eat away at Dimmesdale. Hawthorne says, for example, he digs into the poor clergyman’s heart, “like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave”(Hawthorne 117). He is constantly trying to convince to Dimmesdale to confess and would dig to a dead man’s grave to find any information about him. Roger’s digging evolves into a “fierce and terrible fascination” as he becomes more and more obsessed with exposing his secret; it eventually takes over his life as well as the Reverend’s(117). The fact that Roger would go to such extremes to destroy Reverend.
In this lesson, we will learn about Roger Chillingworth, one of the main characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter.' After a brief overview of the plot, we will analyze his character and several important themes pertaining to his character's development in this timeless classic. Plot OverviewHave you ever had a relationship where your significant other cheated on you? Hopefully not, but if you have, you will better understand the motivations of the character Roger Chillingworth in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical fiction novel was written in 1850, but it tells the story of a young puritan woman in 1640's Salem, Massachusetts, who commits adultery against her husband. An Engraving Depicting Hester Prynne Hester Prynne, the heroine of The Scarlet Letter, commits adultery against her husband Roger Chillingworth, a wealthy English businessman, (only that isn't his real name). When he arrives in Salem, he finds out that his wife has had an affair with another man. In order to blend inconspicuously among the people of Salem, he changes his name and secretly attempts to locate and punish his wife's lover. No one recognizes Chillingworth because he doesn't arrive in Salem until two years after his wife. He had remained behind in England to wrap up business, and then his ship wrecked during his journey to America. Many people assumed he didn't survive, but in puritan society, Hester's crime was still considered adultery even if her husband had died during the voyage. Even though Hester is caught and punished, Chillingworth will not be satisfied until he completely destroys his wife's lover. He suspects the culprit is the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. As part of his plot for revenge, he moves in with him to tend to his failing health. One night, Chillingworth checks on Dimmesdale and sees a red A on the minister's chest.
Enter Your Search Terms to Get Started! Scarlet Letter Character Analysis of Chillingworth In the novel The Scarlet Letter, perhaps the most interesting and hated character was Roger Chillingworth. When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote this book he spent a great deal of time analyzing and defining his characters through their traits and the secrets they held against one another. Chillingworth was Hester Prynne’s true husband. He arrived in Boston, Massachusetts at the beginning of the story when Hester Prynne was on the scaffold being hazed and punished for the crime of adultery. From the beginning Chillingworth chose not to reveal his relationship to Hester and plotted revenge on the father of Pearl. These actions he chose to take made him the most evil and hated character in this novel. Throughout this novel, one sees that Chillingworth’s character traits were primarily negative. These traits all originated from the one choice he had made in the beginningof the story when he decided to seek revenge on the man with whom Hester had had an affair with.He wanted to carry out this plot of revenge out in secret, so he told Hester to never tell a soul of his true identity, and he began living in Boston as a recluse and became known as a very skilled doctor. Late in the story, Reverend Dimmesdale, the man who had the affair with Hester started to become weak and sick. Chillingworth, became Dimmesdale’s doctor and then the two became very close companions. With the years now gone by, the need for revenge had grown inside of Chillingworth. He had became a weak and bitter old man, who had aged dramatically. Once he learned thatDimmesdale was the man he had been looking for, his heart became full of hate and anger. He wanted his revenge desperatly but, did not kill the man or do anything to him, and he even continued to be his doctor. So it became apparent here that Chillingworth.