Chillingworth: A Symbol of Evil

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses many literary tools to accomplish the points he’s trying to make. Among these is his use of symbolism. He uses allegorical images as well as rich and figurative language to convey his messages about sin and the nature of the human self. For example, Dimmesdale represents the power of guily; Pearl, truth. One of the most efficient characters to carry his message is Roger Chillingworth. Roger Chillingworth symbolizes the self-destructive power of revenge, as well as (in his aspect as the epitome of Puritan society) the innate evil found in every person. To accomplish this, Hawthorne emphasizes the deformity of Chillingworth’s body, as well as also incorporating deformities in his mind and soul.

The most obvious of Chillingworth’s deformities is the one that consumes his physical self. This is noted when Chillingworth is first introduced. While Hester is standing on the scaffold, the narrator describes her first impression of Roger Chillingworth:

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself, and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous grab, he had endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne that one of this man’s shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did not seem to hear it (Hawthorne 56).

Here, Chillingworth is presented as an unimposing, if not ugly, man. He is “thin,” “small,” and possessed of an odd “peculiarity.” This physical mutation seems to single him out from society, though he tries with his mixed and “heterogeneous” clothes to conceal it. This deformity must be one of the “unmistakable tokens,” or signs, that have been left on Chillingworth because of his cultivation of the mind; something that makes him different from those around him. This “slight deformity” is described as one of Chillingworth’s “shoulders rose higher than the other.” It seems that the physical off-balance can be seen as a mirror to what goes on inside the man. Where the normal person has an equal balance of good and evil inside them, Chillingworth’s over-abundance of evil begins to take a physical precedence on his unbalanced body. As will become apparent throughout the book, the further Chillingworth pushes his mind to exact revenge, the further the deformity will consume. For example, when Hester was being evaluated by Governor Billingham as to her fitness as raiser of Pearl, Hester “was startled to perceive what a change had come over [Roger Chillingworth’s] features, - how much uglier they were, - how dark his complexion seemed to have grown... and his figure more misshapen,” (Hawthorne 103). Finally, towards the end of the book, Chillingworth is bent down so that he is almost a hunchback. His body has been crippled by the evilness inside itself.

As the story progresses, we learn that Chillingworth’s physical deformity is nowhere near the extent of the malformation of his mental facilities. This depravity is epitomized when he develops his plan of revenge, after arranging himself to be roomed with Dimmesdale:

The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wrecked upon an enemy. To make himself one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, to whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance! (Hawthorne 128)

This passage is very revealing into the nature of Roger Chillingworth. Roger was a man of science. As present in his conversation with Hester, he had seemingly banished all his emotions, leaving him as he pretends to be in this passage: a man of cold, “calm,” “passionless” intellect. Instead, all his emotion and feeling has returned ten fold as his obsession for “vengeance.” His evilness seems to have filled the void where his warmth and compassion should have been. Repeatedly, the overwhelming thoughts on Chillingworth’s mind are “malice,” “Pitiless[ness],” “revenge” and “vengeance.” But this evil didn’t just happen upon Chillingworth. Up until this moment, it was “latent,” hidden within him. This seems to allude to the inherent evilness in all people. Like all the other deformities, however, Chillingworth’s mental disfigurement also consumes him. This is evident as he is described as an “unfortunate old man,” because he is no longer in full control of himself. His obsession has begun to take control over his mind.

Another important aspect of Chillingworth’s intellect is the constant reference between him and his books. During his prison interview Hester, Chillingworth even admits that he is “the bookworm of great libraries” (Hawthorne 69). He is constantly presented as a scholar and an observer - rather than participator - of the human society. He has attempted to use books to replace people. It is not, then, surprising that as the book progresses, the one book referred to most is the Black Book of the devil (of whom Chillingworth is constantly compared).

The culmination of Roger Chillingworth’s mental and physical deformities is the deformity that has overtaken his soul. His ruthless obsession and overwhelming evil are finally destroy him. In the time following Dimmesdale’s death, Chillingworth (a man no longer with any purpose to his life) dies:

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale’s death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength and energy - all his vital and intellectual force - seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shriveled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in short, there was no more Devil’s work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. (Hawthorne 236)

Hawthorne attempts to describe the atrophy and eventual death of both the characteristics as well as the actual life of Roger Chillingworth. This passage emphasizes the constant referral to Chillingworth as a leech (both in the medical and animal sense). Through his search for vengeance, Chillingworth has lived only through the siphoning of Dimmesdale’s own life-force. The more guilty and sick he made Dimmesdale, “the very principle of his life,” the more Chillingworth really felt alive. Dimmesdale was dead; Chillingworth’s mission was complete. With the “triumph” and completion of his vindictive plan, and with his host dead, Chillingworth the parasite dies. Chillingworth found himself with no direction in life, “there was no more Devil’s work... for him to do,” no reason for being. In this passage, also is revealed the inherent evil in all society. Chillingworth is compared to “an uprooted weed,” an ugly and unwanted thing. Yet, in the very beginning, one might say that the “grass-plot, much overgrown with... unsightly vegetation” is symbolic of the Puritan society (Hawthorne 46). If Pearl was the rose among the weeds, then Chillingworth would be an example of the typical Puritan, the “black flower of civilized society.” Chillingworth was simply an example made, by being “uprooted” or lifted above society.

Another important aspect of the corruption of Chillingworth’s soul is the constant comparison between him and the Devil, a comparison second in appearance only to Pearl and the scarlet letter. The more he loses touch with his humanity, the more he takes on the role of a demonic monster. He is called “devil’s adversary,” “archfiend,” and a demonic “bat” (Hawthorne, 121, 146, 164). Yet, with his death, Chillingworth bequeaths his entire wealth to Pearl, the child whose birth had been the herald of his own demise. Perhaps this is Hawthorne’s attempt at presenting the possible redemption of even the evilest of human souls.

The deformities of Chillingworth’s body, mind and spirit crippled him. His own obsession with finding revenge against Dimmesdale killed him. Chillingworth was a symbol used by Nathaniel Hawthorne to represent the power of inherent evil as well as the self-destructiveness of obsession and revenge.