The Sanctity of the Human Heart

The Consumption of Roger Chillingworth

“We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!”

            What is the greatest sin in the world?  Some would say that it is slaying a man in cold blood.  Even then, however, the dying man would have loved to the last.  The most heinous sin is that of killing, not a mortal man, but a mortal man’s ability to love.  No commandments govern this sin, but indeed it is the direst.  In this quote the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale addresses his lover Hester Prynne, having just learned that the man whom he shared his innermost secrets had nothing else in mind when “treating” the ailing clergyman save the demise of the aforementioned minister.  The confidant and “physician”, Roger Chillingworth, was Hester’s spurned lover, though the nature of her spurning was far more innocent than the craven mortification of Dimmesdale’s love.  Hester inasmuch told Roger that she never loved him, and moreover the uxorial devotion she showed towards him was of security not love, “I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any.”  In the 17^th century many marriages were arranged for security.  Also, in 17^th century Puritan Boston, the sin of adultery was paramount in its grievousness.  Hester is branded with the letter “A”, but her sin was one based in unabashed love.  Roger Chillingworth’s sin was one based in the base act of violating “the sanctity of a human heart.”  There are many quotes and episodes that clearly illustrate the fiendish nature of Chillingworth, and the depravity of his actions.  The first of such motifs is Roger Chillingworth’s evil smile, which Hawthorne employs to show the sadistic nature of Chillingworth.  The second motif is Chillingworth’s equation with Satan or “the black man”.  The third, and most poignant, is the ongoing saga of Chillingworth’s revenge against the woman who wronged him and the man who did him the greatest injustice.  These three motifs, along with many others, act in concordance to further the overall effect of illustrating what the vileness of revenge will do to a man who professes to have once been “a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself--kind, true, just.”

            Hawthorne throughout the novel uses motifs repeatedly in the same context to dramatize a character’s flaw.  The most obvious one is Dimmesdale’s hand over the heart.  The aggregation of Hawthorne ’s motif in the same context, that it becomes a symbol.  Likewise, Chillingworth’s menacing smile is a symbol, which comes to be analogous with the increasing gravity of his revenge.

“It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively, that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it.” 

The evil purpose is evinced by his demonic smile.  Chillingworth smiles whenever he has done something exacting in his revenge.  Though Hawthorne says that, “the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it,” the good reverend Dimmesdale has not the capability to do so.  Indeed, the one person most subjected to his smiles is Dimmesdale.  Chillingworth’s evil smile helps to dramatize the fact that his evil is heightened by revenge.  Hawthorne achieves this dramatization by his careful use of the smile symbol.  In fact the Chillingworth’s smile is mentioned only thirteen times (Yes, I am sure it is thirteen times.).  Of these thirteen instances the most damning to the dramatization of Chillingworth’s evil is “This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew ever strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.”  The smile increased in the presence of the man whose heart he was slowly, methodically bludgeoning.

            What is more damning to a character than being equated to Satan?  Not much, I assure you.  When however this equation becomes a motif, the consequence and significance become ever greater.  It is no mistake that Hawthorne equates Chillingworth with the fallen angel, Lucifer, as Chillingworth himself has made the greatest fall.  While Satan’s flaw was non serviam, Chillingworth’s was the all-consuming acts of revenge. 

“In a word, 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. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over.”

Old Roger is nothing more than a sadist consumed with revenge.  It is his motive, and means that make old Roger Chillingworth most.  Chillingworth seeks revenge on the man “who has wronged us [Chillingworth and Hester] both”, but the fact of the matter is Dimmesdale did not wrong Hester.  Dimmesdale is the man who received Hester’s love, something Chillingworth could never accomplish despite how much he desired it.  This makes the minister, therefore, the most despicable human on the earth.  As such, Roger Chillingworth seeks to squelch any semblance of love in the minister’s heart.  As mentioned at the first, the sin of killing man’s ability to love is the most heinous, and as such Hawthorne equates Chillingworth with Satan.

            The two prior motifs are Hawthorne ’s means of expressing his disdain for Chillingworth and his actions stemming from revenge.  Though revenge is a deviant act, the manner in which Chillingworth exacts his is so nefarious that the equation to Satan becomes a less and less hard to accept. 

“Calm, gentle, passionless, as he [Chillingworth] appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice … which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend … All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!”

The narration here shows that the level of revenge Chillingworth seeks is almost inconceivable.  Truly it is inconceivable, but Hawthorne was a student of evil.  He was infatuated with the definition, nature, and consequences of evil.  The depiction of Roger Chillingworth is a tracing of the evil and malice of revenge from its inception to its fruition. (Even though Chillingworth loses the war in the end, “Thou hast escaped me!” Dimmesdale dies from the many wounds to his heart suffered in the seven-year battle.)  Truly then Chillingworth’s entire life in Puritanical Boston is a tracing of the consumption of revenge. 

            Revenge is all consuming, yet it is only a vice.  Revenge at the expense of another’s heart, that is to say effectively killing a man’s ability to love, is the greatest and most dastardly act a mortal man can perpetrate.  Roger Chillingworth does no less that invade the very marrow of Arthur Dimmesdale’s soul, into the deepest chambers of his heart.  Chillingworth prays upon the love and responsibility that Arthur feels towards his flock and his lover, moreover he exacts his revenge with a sadist’s smile.  Roger Chillingworth is the quintessence of evil in all respects, and as such the equation to Satan is conceivable, even necessary.  Revenge so consumes the lost man that he lives for nothing else.

“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.” 

In the end the revenge consumes the physician with a deathly tooth, and he succumbs to his own prescribed path.