Both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale have committed a sin, probably prompted by a moment of love, lust, and loneliness, but thereafter, each of them goes forward in a way that consists only of goodness, both of them, in their own ways, ministering to the community. It is Roger Chillingworth who is the personification of evil in this tale. Chillingworth has a cold mind, but his soul burns bright with his quest for vengeance. Posing...
Both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale have committed a sin, probably prompted by a moment of love, lust, and loneliness, but thereafter, each of them goes forward in a way that consists only of goodness, both of them, in their own ways, ministering to the community. It is Roger Chillingworth who is the personification of evil in this tale. Chillingworth has a cold mind, but his soul burns bright with his quest for vengeance. Posing as a physician, he calculatedly befriends Dimmesdale, pretending he wants to heal him, but this is only in an effort to unmask Dimmesdale's sinful behavior. Hawthorne makes clear who the truly evil person is in innumerable passages. For example, he says,
...old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office (Hawthorne 95).
Chillingworth is on a devil's mission, in other words, and thus he has become a devil. Throughout the entire story, as Chillingworth's intentions are revealed, it becomes clearer and clearer that he is evil incarnate.
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