Once Dimmesdale is dead, he no longer has a reason to live. He trusts native medicine, which, for a white guy in the midth century, means that's he's got a surprisingly open mind. What could possibly possess this man to leave his fortune to the daughter of his mortal enemy and the wife who cheated on him?
Has he learned some sort of lesson? Is it an apology to Hester? To Dimmesdale? Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Study Guide. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Previous Next. What type of work does Chillingworth take on in New England?
What does Dimmesdale believe he sees when the meteor lights up the night sky? How does Pearl react when she first sees her mother without the scarlet A?
What makes Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale finally feel hope about their future? Why does Hester choose the forest to meet Dimmesdale and Chillingworth? In order to find this out, he must get closer to Dimmesdale: "The mysterious illness of Dimmesdale--mysterious to the town-- is something he says he can treat, and so he becomes the minister's physician; he even lives with him" Doren While living together, Chillingworth constantly digs for Dimmesdale to release his secret, but he will not reveal it, and his condition becomes worse.
Finally, Chillingworth catches Dimmesdale sleeping and thrust aside the vestment to discover the letter "A" upon his chest. With no doubt in Chillingworth's mind about Dimmesdale's relation to Pearl, his torment toward him increases. Chillingworth is now in complete control of Dimmesdale, whose health is deteriorating. Hester notices the deterioration of Dimmesdale's health, and she thinks that her faithfulness, in keeping Chillingworth's identity a secret, is to blame.
When she goes to Chillingworth and speaks to him about revealing his identity, he neither condones nor condemns her decision. While listening to the old man, she noticed how much he had changed over the past seven years.
Hester finally tells Dimmesdale about Chillingworth's true identity. This new knowledge does not free Dimmesdale of Chillingworth's control. But he need not have taken the trouble of doing so because the minister has in the meanwhile made up his mind to make a public confession of his guilt. Roger Chillingworth, unlike Hester and Dimmesdale, is a flat character.
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. 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. Hawthorne begins building this symbol of evil vengeance with Chillingworth's first appearance ".
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. Even when he is better dressed, however, Chillingworth is far from attractive.
He is small, thin, and slightly deformed, with one shoulder higher than the other. Although he "could hardly be termed aged," he has a wrinkled face and appears "well stricken in years. 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.
At that point, however, he has several choices; he chooses revenge. 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.
Chillingworth is not a Puritan. 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.
Instead, as the scholar, he studied their knowledge of herbs and medicines to learn. 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. This study of herbs and medicines later links his work to the "black medicine" and helps him keep his victim alive.
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.
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