The Puritan definition of truth was the word of God or every verse contained in the scripture, and the truth is believed to be “the self-expression of God”. Puritans took the word of God very serious and depended on it for their life lessons. In The Scarlet Letter Roger Chillingworth identifies Mr. Dimmesdale’s faults and want to uncover the secret that’s destroying him inside. Chillingworth makes it his purpose to find the truth. Chillingworth has an opportunity to do so while Dimmesdale is asleep from the drugs that Chillingworth gave him. During this time when Chillingworth is searching for the truth, he exposes Dimmesdale’s chest and founds exactly what he was looking for the scarlet letter imprinted on his chest. On page 125 starts Chillingworth’s discovery with finding the truth. This …show more content…
Hawthorne immediately corrects himself, and says that Chillingworth is more like “a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom” (125). These comparisons of Chillingworth to a miner and a sexton, and the truth to gold and a jewel emphasizes this obsession that Chillingworth must finding the truth.Chillingworth is “the leech” and he 's by Dimmesdale’s side making him sick. The longer Chillingworth stays with Dimmesdale, the worse Dimmesdale’s condition gets. This is his newfound passion and his persistence won’t allow him to end this hunt for the truth. Another statement that Hawthorne makes in this section is that Chillingworth will not find anything except for mortality and corruption, but these were the things that he sought (125). This is giving the reader more insight on Chillingworth and his obsession. Chillingworth’s plan to infiltrate Dimmesdale’s home as his personal caretaker was to search for the truth. The once wise man had transformed once his obsession took control of him. Chillingworth’s
Mr Chillingworth's unnecessary obsession with revenge takes him to a place that is very hard to get back from. Mr. Chillingworth grows more evil every chapter. His intent on torturing Mr. Dimmesdale causes him to become both physically and psychologically monstruous. “Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,
Roger Chillingworth committed the greater sin in the Scarlet Letter. Chillingworth was a malicious man. After the news that Hester had committed adultery, he became more and more like the “Black Man.” He lied about being a doctor and his identity. Additionally, Chillingworth was the overall cause for Dimmesdale’s death, after seven years of torturing his mind.
He moves in with Dimmesdale, and claims he will care for him, but the public cannot see that his intention is to torture Dimmesdale. Hawthorne explains, “The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. 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” (126). He deliberately chooses to drive Chillingworth into insanity.
His persona shifts from a “man of skill, the kind and friendly physician” to a man with “something ugly and evil in his face” (85+). The community believes that Chillingworth is in some form of Satan, and they believe Chillingworth was sent to test Dimmesdale’s faith. Chillingworth sparks an interest in the health of the young Reverend Dimmesdale and fulfills a “new purpose”. Chillingworth
Dimmesdale, despairing of life, told Chillingworth that “[he] could be well content, that [his] labors, and [his] sorrows, and [his] sins, and [his] pains, should shortly end with [him], and what is earthly of them be buried in [his] grave”(83).
After Hester is publicly humiliates with the scarlet symbol, Chillingworth reveals to be “a better physician of [him] than many that claim the medical degree” in the prison (54). His knowledge of medicine helps take care of the baby who was not feeling well as well as Hester Prynne. This evidently shows Chillingworth is a loyal physician when it comes to medical problems. Also, there was that time when Chillingworth and Dimmesdale “came gradually to spend much time together” and eventually became “close friends” (93). Obviously, the truth is Chillingworth did it to find out the truth of Dimmesdale’s secret and later on to ruin him.
He went into the town to see someone he knew very well up on a scaffold showing her sinful mistake to everyone who could see. The woman on the Scaffold was not only someone Chillingworth knows but his wife, Hester Prynn. Though she was on the scaffold she was not alone, in her arms lay a small baby, Hester's baby. A pain ran through Chillingworth's mind, or maybe is wasn't pain it was anger. Hester did not see the baby as bad news, Chillingworth did force her into marriage and left her for 2 years in a new town, Hester is a very attractive girl and because Roger was so old and gone for so long everyone assumed he had perished.
Chillingworth and Dimmesdale formed a close relationship because Chillingworth believed that it was necessary for him to do so in order for him to try to cure Mr. Dimmesdale. Chillingworth began to show unkind qualities and became a thief of the riches that belonged to Mr. Dimmesdale. When Chillingworth asked Mr. Dimmesdale to reveal the wound and trouble in his soul in order for him to be healed, he lashed out at him and stormed off. Ultimately, Chillingworth had found Mr. Dimmesdale to be in a deep sleep
and yet he ambitiously seeks further torture. As his antipathy amplified, Chillingworth perpetually imbued Dimmesdale with a fiery warmth of regret for the scandalous iniquity he had wrongfully commit; Yet, Chillingworth’s “righteous” acts are not righteous at all, in fact he commits sin tenfold that of Dimmesdale just through these acts. Chillingworth poses himself as a kind man attempting to heal the Reverend, but this is a lie, a lie directly to the face of God. Chillingworth does not care for the health of the Reverend, his true underlying intentions are to seek information from
The way Chillingworth “scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life….. and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery...might call out something new to the surface of his character. While “it was a physician that he presented himself, and such was cordially received”, many people still have their doubts about him. Since Chillingworth is curious about Dimmesdale’s problems, he made “an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every eeb and flow of the minister’s life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician.” He wants so deeply to know what Dimmesdale is hiding, that he convinces Dimmesdale’s friends to let them live together, even though Dimmesdale is not truly sick; maybe sick of himself, but
As the novel symbolically represents Chillingworth as a leech and Dimmesdale as his patient it shows how Chillingworth functions. Chillingworth did not want Dimmesdale to die but for him to torture him for the rest of his life since he would have no greater purpose after Dimmesdale. This could see as reasoning why Chillingworth had the intention to board the ship Hester Dimmesdale and Pearl were on so he could get the gratification of always being there to torture
‘Thou hast escaped me!’ he repeated more than once” (242). When Dimmesdale finally frees himself, Chillingworth can no longer torture him. If Dimmesdale had been honest from the
While both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale were living together so Chillingworth can conduct laboratorial exams, the narrator makes
Hawthorne narrates Chillingworth’s actions as “He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption” (Hawthorne 107). The physician is intentionally harming a man, which is considered immoral. Furthermore, Chillingworth’s actions are depicted again through the author’s narration on Dimmesdale, “While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy” (Hawthorne 117). Chillingworth has a black soul, meaning that he lacks compassion, sympathy, and
In the beginning of the novel, Hawthorne provides a description of Chillingworth’s past life that allows us to understand Chillingworth’s superior qualities. Before Chillingworth moved to the New World, he lived in Europe with his wife Hester. Chillingworth was a man with “intellectual gifts” and a physician whom helped those who were sickly (Hawthorne, 60). After they married, Chillingworth sends Hester to a puritan village in Massachusetts. Chillingworth was gone for so long that Hester and the townspeople assumed he had perished at sea on his way over to the Massachusetts colony.