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Hawthorne further develops this “other world” involvement - whether fate or predetermined by some higher power - when he describes the physician’s appearance as being just in time to “help” Dimmesdale. This study of herbs and medicines later links his work to the “black medicine” and helps him keep his victim alive. He has, indeed, spent his life as a lonely scholar, cutting himself off when necessary in the quest for knowledge from the world of other men. Instead, as the scholar, he studied their knowledge of herbs and medicines to learn. While he was a captive of the Indians for “upward of a year,” he did not judge them as heathens and infidels, and, unlike the Puritans, he did not seek to convert them. His rude awakening is described a second time in Chapter 9 when Hawthorne calls him “a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people.” What should have been a warm and loving homecoming after being apart from his wife has become terrible.Ĭhillingworth is not a Puritan. At that point, however, he has several choices he chooses revenge. The reader feels a bit sorry for Roger Chillingworth during the first scaffold scene when he arrives in Massachusetts Bay Colony and finds his wife suffering public shame for an adulterous act. Although he “could hardly be termed aged,” he has a wrinkled face and appears “well stricken in years.” He has, however, a look of calm intelligence, and his eyes, though they have a “strange, penetrating power,” are dim and bleared, testifying to long hours of study under lamplight. He is small, thin, and slightly deformed, with one shoulder higher than the other. Having just ended over a year of captivity by the Indians, his appearance is hideous, partly because of his strange mixture of “civilized and savage costume.”Įven when he is better dressed, however, Chillingworth is far from attractive. ”) in the novel by associating him with deformity, wildness (the Indians), and mysterious power. dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth. Hawthorne begins building this symbol of evil vengeance with Chillingworth’s first appearance (“. Once he comes to Boston, we see him only in situations that involve his obsession with vengeance, where we learn a great deal about him. While he develops from a kind scholar into an obsessed fiend, he is less of a character and more of a symbol doing the devil’s bidding. When Hester is brought to her cell, the stranger visits her, and it is revealed that the man is her presumed dead husband from England, Roger Chillingworth.Roger Chillingworth, unlike Hester and Dimmesdale, is a flat character. While this occurs, a stranger arrives in the colony and watches from the back of the crowd. The townspeople heckle her and implore her to reveal the child’s father, but she refuses. In mid-17th century Boston, then known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a woman named Hester Prynne is made to stand on a scaffold in the town square and endure abuse for several hours as punishment for birthing a child out of wedlock.
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Notable Adaptations: The 2010 teen comedy film “Easy A,” starring Emma Stone was partially inspired by the novel.Main Characters: Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, Pearl.private, scientific and religious beliefs Themes: Shame and judgment, public vs.