Scarlet Letter

Roger Chillingworth

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is about Hester Prynne, who committed adultery in Puritan Boston. She was shamed, and sent to the scaffold, where she was publicly humiliated, and sent back to prison. After her release, she tried to live out the rest of her life in the outskirts of the town. The only companion she had was her daughter, Pearl who is the living proof of her crime. Hester and Pearl live their lives together, trying to move past the shame that Hester had brought on them. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is the local minister, and the fellow adulterer with Hester. He tries to hide from his image, because of his horrible sin. Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband was a businessman in England, and sent Hester to America before him so he could clean up his affairs. Throughout the story, the four main characters, show many examples of their duality which is the concept that man (woman) possesses two antagonistic forces: good and evil, which are in constant opposition with another. Roger Chillingworth is the best representation of duality. His character changes from an honest, hardworking husband that turns into an evil, twisted old man.

Roger Chillingworth's duality is first seen upon "his arrival in the market place" (Hawthorne 53). His wife, Hester Prynne, is on the scaffold and being publicly humiliated in front of the entire town. As he looks at her "A writhing horror twisted itself

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across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight" (54). He notices the "A" on her chest and asks a nearby townsperson why the woman is on the scaffold. The man explains to him that she was arrested for adultery against her husband that "sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs" (54). The town's person makes Chillingworth sound like a good, hardworking man. That he sent he wife here out of the goodness of his heart and she betrayed him. Hawthorne introduces Chillingworth to be the bad guy; by saying he was snake-like. Not one page later, the town's person is speaking of how he was taking care of affairs in Europe and his wife.

Later Chillingworth goes to the jail to visit Hester, on the jailer's request. "he thought it fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach." (62) Hawthorne described Chillingworth as a doctor, as a helpful person. He notices the baby, Pearl, crying and throwing a fit. "His first care was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her" (63). It would also seem to anyone that he is there to help Hester. Chillingworth, is not there to help her however, his is there just to collect information, and a name "rejoined he with a smile of dark and self relying intelligence" (66). Hester tells him that she would never reveal the name of her lover and

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