Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Cite a passage that indicates the isolation of Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet LetterNathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter,
the passage that signifies Roger Chillingworth's complete isolation is in the final
scaffold scene as the Reverend Dimmesdale, who has finished his Founder's Day sermon,
walks towards the scaffold and stretches out his arm to Hester Prynne who stands holding
her little Pearl.  Just then, Roger Chillingworth pushes his way through the
crowd, 



or,
perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether
region--to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do!  Be that as it might, the
old man rushed forward and caught the minister by the
arm.


"Madman, hold!....Wave back that woman!  cast off this
child! All shall be well! ....I can yet save
you!....



  But the minister
repulses him, and he calls again to Hester to join him on the scaffold.  As they mount
the scaffold "Old Roger Chillingworth" follows them:


readability="12">

"hadst thou sought the whole earth over, " said
he looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret,--no high place
nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,--save on this very
scaffold!"



The three are
united and whole on the scaffold, but Roger Chillingworth is alone.  He kneels down
beside the Reverend with a blank,


readability="8">

"dull countenace, out of which the life seemed to
have departed."


"Thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more
than once.  "Thou hast escaped
me!"



Another chapter in which
Chillingworth is presented as a dark, alienated character is Chapter 14 in which Hester
talks to Chillingworth on behalf of Mr. Dimmesdale.  As she looks steadily at the old
man, she is struck with wonder to observe what a change had taken place in him.  As he
speaks to Hester, he admits that he has been


readability="14">

"A mortal man, with once a human heart, [who]
has become a fiend at his elbow!....


The unfortune
physician, ...lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful
shape, which he could not recognise, ursurping the place of his own image in a
glass.



Then, in Chapter 15,
after Hester walks away, Chillingworth, now alone, gathers herbs.  As he does so, Hester
wonders at what appears to be


readability="7">

...a circle of ominous shadow moving along with
his deformity, whichever himself way he turned
himself?




Perhaps
the most spiritually isolated character of Hawthorne's novel, Roger Chillingworth has
been set apart from his fellow man from his youth when he was a student.  Vowing revenge
upon Dimmesdale and determined to learn his secret after returning to the colony,
Chillingworth lives a life apart from others as he feigns being the physician of the
minister.  His subjugation of his heart for his intellect furthers his alienation from
the community of man in his quest for revenge, turning himself by his own admission into
a fiend.  In the end, Chillingworth has alienated himself from his fellow man in his
quest for his one victim and from his God.

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