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The Scarlet Letter Revenge Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #1 "Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense,—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this,—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!--and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!" (4.18) |
Roger Chillingworth tells Hester that it would have been better for the minister to have died rather than face the kind of evil scrutiny he has made him endure for these many years.
| Quote #2 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. (11.1) |
What does the narrator mean here when he says that Chillingworth’s plan to expose Dimmesdale "was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread?" This sentence makes us think that Chillingworth may initially have had another plan altogether, one that didn’t involve ruining Dimmesdale’s life. Or perhaps Chillingworth didn’t even have a plan to begin with. If this is the case, how and why does Chillingworth end up inflicting the psychological trauma that he does?
| Quote #3 Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there, with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated. (12.34) |
Chillingworth (who is chilling in the darkness, hehe) has a look on his face so disturbing and malevolent that it burns into the darkness. It’s kind of like when you accidentally stare directly into a lit light bulb, resulting in your seeing miniature light bulbs and points of light over the course of the next five minutes. The description of Chillingworth’s gaze here makes him appear less human to us. The fact that the narrator likens him to an "arch-fiend" doesn’t hurt, either. Chillingworth is a chilly man.
