Chillingworth Character Traits example essay topic

418 words
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 character traits were primarily negative. These traits all originated from the one choice he had made in the beginning of 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 Dimmesdales 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 that Dimmesdale was the man he had been looking for, his heart became full of hate and anger. He wanted his revenge desperately but, did not kill the man or do anything to him, and he even continued to be his doctor.

So it became apparent her that Chillingworth needed this hate and revenge to survive. At the end of this novel, after Dimmesdale died, Chillingworth felt there was no more point in his living. The man whom he hated the most was dead. Now he could not leech off of Dimmesdale anymore, with his feelings of hate and revenge. Those feelings were gone now that there was no man to seek revenge on anymore. So after Dimmesdales death, Chillingworth pulled away from society and just withered away by himself in solitude.