Scarlet Letter Revenge Quotes

In “The Scarlet Letter,” the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, depicts Roger Chillingworth as a man that is out for revenge. Chillingworth comes into the story and immediately comes to realize that his ex-wife has betrayed him by sleeping with another man. Chillingworth wants to avenge his pride by finding the man that did him wrong by sneaking into his personal life and torturing him under his nose. Throughout this book, Chillingworth changes in many different ways, physically and emotionally. Driven by his lust for revenge, Roger Chillingworth uses his personal background to hide his intent of torturing his wife’s hidden lover, and changes his being throughout the book. One main event that happens throughout the whole book, “The Scarlet Letter,” is the revenge that Roger Chillingworth wants to wreak on whoever impregnated his wife. The first time that Chillingworth talks about his revenge is with Hester when he says, “Tthere are few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 52). In this passage, Chillingworth is implying that he will put all of his personal time and resources to finding the man, and getting his revenge. Another time when Chillingworth

Early in the book, Chillingworth mentions, “There are none in this land that know me” (Hawthorne, 1944, p. 52), which implies that it does not matter what he says, he is able to get closer to the person he wants to torture, because no one knows anything about him. Later in the book, he gets to live in his victim’s house by claiming that he is a physician because in his earlier life he had “made himself extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 81). To accomplish his vengeance, Chillingworth needed to use his personal background to infiltrate into his victim’s