In the world of literature, Roger Chillingworth stands, somewhat unceremoniously, as a symbol of true evil. In ‘The Scarlet Letter’ he is the living embodiment of the Black Man, who is, in the Puritan faith, a representation of the devil. He shares similar physical features to the Black Man and even shares similar desires. In ‘The Scarlet Letter’, the Black Man is said to wander the forest, looking to capture souls. This might be the most apparent similarity that Chillingworth shares with the Black Man, the desire to take one’s soul. Reverend Dimmesdale’s soul, to be precise.
A thoroughly despicable character for most of ‘The Scarlet Letter’, Chillingworth emerges as partially sympathetic, thanks to author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s careful presentation and prose. In the end, Chillingworth’s rage and madness seemed to develop out of an almost malformed and tragically stunted heart, not out of an incurable hatred. His redemptive arc serves as a reminder that when it comes to truly true evil, there is no chance of introspection. Evil, by its very nature, looks to cause external conflict, refusing to address any internal conflicts. For where is the chaos in the simple reflection? Yet Chillingworth does just that. In his dying moments, he becomes painfully aware of the harm he has caused. He sees his actions with heartbreaking clarity and redeems himself as a direct result.
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Chillingworth’s heartbreaking declaration in Chapter 14 helps to elucidate this idea of introspective clarity. “It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a friend’s office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man”. As beautiful and complex as that declaration may be, context is a much-needed necessity if we are to fully break down this passage on a thematic level and understand just how Chillingworth was able to find his sense of self after falling so far down humanity’s moral ladder.
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The start of Chillingworth’s descent into bitter madness truly begins when he takes Hester’s adultery as a personal betrayal rather than a consequence of her immense loneliness during his long absence. In Chapter 4 of ‘The Scarlet Letter’, Chillingworth acknowledges the absurdity of their relationship and even characterizes himself as a man who is in a state of decay, yet he refuses to forgive or even excuse Hester on these grounds. Instead, he wishes, somewhat spitefully, for Hester’s continued health, so that her shame can follow her around for the rest of her miserable life.
Chillingworth internalizes these toxic feelings of pain and rejection by burying them deep down inside, keeping them hidden from the public eye. Instead, he chooses to deal with these tortured emotions by obsessing over Hester’s lover, the mysterious man who is to blame for all of Chillingworth’s misfortune and grief. Enter Reverend Dimmesdale.
As the town doctor, Chillingworth is trusted to care for the ailing Arthur Dimmesdale and slowly discovers the Reverend’s adulterous secret. This revelation pushes Chillingworth past his moral limits, and he attaches himself like a leach onto Dimmesdale, the cause of his pain and envy. As a direct result of Chillingworth’s psychological torture, Dimmesdale’s illness gets worse and worse. Beyond any personal salvation, Chillingworth now lives solely to torment Dimmesdale, whose eventual death causes his own. With the source of his purpose and spite gone, madness fades out of Chillingworth’s life. With the hazy fog of revenge now lifted, he attempts to redeem himself by giving the allotment of his entire estate to Hester and Dimmesdale’s child, Pearl. He dies shortly thereafter.
The heart-wrenching irony in Chillingworth’s final act of redemption is made clear in that poetic statement that he delivers to Hester in the home of the Black Man, the forest. Essentially, he is reckoning with and acknowledging his own villainy. At that moment, Chillingworth is well aware of the fact that he had become a monster that devoted every thought and action of his life to getting his revenge.
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Hawthorne himself tries to push the reader to believe that none of the characters are ultimately responsible for the actions that have taken place: “It is our fate”. A short and powerful sentence that makes it seems like the actions of the characters were truly out of their hands, out of their control. Hester herself, only moments before Chillingworth’s declaration, overcome by the sorrow of her own frustrations and guilt, had been asked to respond to Chillingworth’s question: “‘And what am I now?’ demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. ‘I have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who made me so?’. Hester replies with “It was myself!”. She takes on the burden of guilt that has driven Chillingworth to his deathbed. She shoulders this burden because she sees through the hardened exterior of Chillingworth. She cuts past the internalized emotions that led Chillingworth down this path. I believe Hawthorne himself helps to set the stage for this redemptive moment when he points out, only a page or two earlier, that Chillingworth “was a striking example of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only… under-take a devil’s office”.
This is a point of realization for Hester, Chillingworth, and the reader. We can now see, clear as day, that hate has truly taken over Chillingworth’s body and we see him physically a demon, the dreaded Black Man that he shared so much in common. Hester even later points out how hatred and revenge have turned this wise and educated man into a demon. At this point, we do not so much as have sympathy for Chillingworth but instead take pity on him. He has let this toxic urge consume him to the point where he can’t even recognize himself… What a truly heartbreaking thought.
Ultimately though that passage in Chapter 14, Chillingworth accepts his own faults and the sins that he had committed as an inevitable and inescapable fate. He says that the actions of himself, Hester, and Dimmesdale are not sins in the true sense of the word, only in the word of Puritan preachers. Chillingworth admits that he must continue to try and do what his emotions are telling him what’s right, because no matter what, he must embrace the consequences of his actions and follow the path that has been laid out for him.
All this brings us back to what the embodiment of pure evil requires when put in the context of Roger Chillingworth. If it requires an all-consuming and destructive viewpoint of others, then Chillingworth might fight into the category quite well. If he isn’t wholly defined by that, if he was able to look within himself and find the redeeming qualities that pushed him past a symbol of the devil’s bidding, then what does that make him? Certainly not a purely evil character… Perhaps it makes Roger Chillingworth flawed and inconsistent. Perhaps it makes him a character that had more in common with the cowardly Reverend Dimmesdale and brave Hester Prynne than he did with the demon that lurked in the depths of that dreaded forest.
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