The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn Essay -- revenge, chillingwort

Revenger consumes the soul of the extractor, and leaves him a shell of his former self. Revenge often leads him down an irreversible path that ultimately proves to be detrimental to him. Such acts are especially grave according to Puritan belief, which holds that vengeance belonged only to God. As a Puritan, Nathaniel Hawthorn knew about such believes, and as a master of words, a literary genius who had a deep understanding of human emotions and boundaries, he develops a story whose central theme was revenge. Hawthorne uses The Scarlet Letter to reprimand revenge as a detrimental act never allows a person to be satisfied and in the end, destroys him. He uses Chillingworth’s conversations with others to characterize Chillingworth’s radical transformation from a scholarly person to a devil whose sole purpose was to torment Dimmesdale as retribution for committing adultery with Hester. In his exposition, Chillingworth, a learned man justly demanded that his wife’s fellow sinner speak up and identify himself. This was no doubt a perfectly normal response for a man, who after being in the company of Native Americans for over three years, happens to come to the right place at the right moment to see his wife on the scaffold, humiliated by the overbearing sin of adultery. In his conversation with Hester in jail, Chillingworth made it clear that he did not intend to harm neither Hester nor Pearl. He contended that had he been a more open caring husband, and not devoted his youth to books and the pursuit of wisdom, such an incident would had never occurred. In admitting partial responsibility for Hester’s sins, Chillingworth is characterized as a humble and sagacious man, which Hawthorne employs as the peak from which he strips away Chil... ...intellectual force – seemed at once to desert him† (254). As a man whose sole purpose thereof was to extract revenge, when death moved one-step ahead of him, he had no more purpose in life, and thus too died within the year. Through an analysis of his dialogue with other characters, the reader can witness Chillingworth’s transformation from a leaned man to a vengeful demon. Hawthorne reveals the detriment of revenge, which ultimately drove Dimmesdale and Chillingworth himself to their unintended death, and condemns it as an act that only God can execute. Only Hawthorne could have conjured such an elaborate love story whose central theme is the devastating effects of revenge. This novel serves to remind people of the harmful consequences of extracting revenge without constraint, and how once a person embarked on the path of vengeance, his demise is set in stone.