The Biggest Sinner In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter’s Biggest Sinner
According to the Bible, the Devil sought more power than he already had. He wanted the power that God has. When he wages war and loses, he is thrown to hell, but his hunger for power never ceases. He punishes people for their sin to gain more power and pleasure. The Devil is, nevertheless, the worst sinner, and a parallel is drawn to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In his novel, Hawthorne presents the reader with three sinners: Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingsworth. It is clear in the novel that all of them are wrongdoers. Dimmesdale’s and Hester’s adultery causes them to be spiritual transgressors, but Hester’s sin is revealed to the village while Dimmesdale’s is a secret. Chillingsworth’s intentional
A man who could see Roger Chillingworth, at the moment he realizes that Hester committed adultery, “would have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself, when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom. But what distinguished the physician’s ecstasy from Satan’s was the trait of wonder in it!” (Hawthorne 115). Here, the author shows parallelism between Chillingsworth and Satan: The two gain the same amount of pleasure in inflicting pain on another person. Chillingsworth is fully aware that he is about to torture someone. Also, Chillingsworth is preparing to punish another person for that person’s sin. Dimmesdale did commit adultery, which is a sin, but the devil is the one who punishes someone for his sin. The Devil’s intent is to gain power for himself through torturing and bounding sinners to his kingdom. Similarly, Chillingsworth is torturing Dimmesdale and playing the Devil’s role. The word “wonder,” which has an excited, happy connotation, implies that he is not only aware and will feel pleasure, but he will be excited and happy while he commits the sin of taking the devil’s role upon himself. Similar to the previous situation, Chillingsworth’s maliciousness is shown when Dimmesdale points out to Hester that, “[t]hat old man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of
However, by putting Dimmesdale in pain, he is also putting Hester in pain. During Dimmesdale’s, who has been tormented by Chillingsworth, and Hester’s conversation, she realizes that she cannot bear to see “[t]he frown of [the] pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man … and live!” (161). Chillingsworth’s justification is not valid because he knows that Hester is not happy with him poisoning Dimmesdale, but he purposely ignores the pain that he inflicts on Hester, and continues to poison Dimmesdale to his death. This punishment does not fit his victim’s crime. Months of pain, torture, and death is not a proper balance to adultery. Similarly, the Devil does not care how wrong the sin is: the pain and torture is all the same. The only difference is in how the sinner is tortured. Chillingsworth is further shown as the devil and because of that, a malicious person. He truly becomes a fiend as a result of his own revenge, and as such, his sin is the