UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGOGICA NACIONAL

The revenge in The Scarlet Letter

Negative feelings have more power to keep a person alive than positive feelings. It
can be seen clearly in The Scarlet Letter, The most influential novel written by
Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1950. The Scarlet Letter shows a complex conflict of
emotions, between love, contempt and finally revenge. The story is about a
woman to whom her husband sends to the United States to meet later with her but
she in her waiting commits adultery and has a daughter of pastor, when her
husband arrives and sees what happened, swears to take revenge on that
mysterious man whose identity his wife does not want to reveal. Blinded by
revenge, this man has no other purpose to live and when he cannot finally carry his
plan out, he dies.

Silent revenge can sometimes seem the most satisfying. In the novel it is possible
to be appreciated that Chillingworth since his encounter with Hester in which she
did not want to reveal the name of the father of her daughter, plans to take revenge
of him and to look for him until finding it but his revenge was different.

The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path

before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to
tread. 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 wreaked
upon an enemy. (p209)

It can be seen in this section that Chillingworth planned to revenge silently,

torturing with his presence, analyzing every each step that Dimmesdale gave,
delighting in being a merciful man who did not want to damage the reputation of
Dimmesdale but to make him feel the sin.

Maria Camila Vargas Lopez

ELLP
2013234048
 UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGOGICA NACIONAL

The feeling of revenge can transform into a demon even the best-hearted person.
Chillingworth was not a bad man, it can be seen that he had just arrived to the
United States hoping to meet the woman he loved. Even when he meets her, and
they talk about them he blames himself for not deserving her for his youth. But,
revenge consumed him and turned him into a demon and a worse sinner than
those who committed adultery.

A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his
especial torment.
The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look
of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognise,
usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments
which sometimes occur only at the interval of yearswhen a mans moral aspect
is faithfully revealed to his minds eye. Not improbably he had never before viewed
himself as he did now.

His transformation and his feelings were so strong that when Dimmesdale dies, he
felt without a purpose to live and dies too.

In conclusion, the novel has very interesting elements around the theme of
revenge and how it consumes humans to the limit. It is also possible that despite
the difference in times, human feelings never change, and the author expressed
and raised very well the human feelings present in his time, without thinking,
perhaps more than a century later, humanity would continue to live in these.

Maria Camila Vargas Lopez

ELLP
2013234048