The Scarlet Letter Roger Chillingworth Quotes

"Thou hast escaped me!" [Chillingworth] repeated more than once. "Thou hast escaped me!"

"May God forgive thee!" said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply sinned!" (23.28-29)

By now, the whole "I'm gonna get you" shtick that Chillingworth has been playing with for the last seven years seems to be less about exactly a well-deserved revenge than about playing some sort of sick cat-and-mouse game. Check out the word "escaped": Dimmesdale is going to expose his sin and die, but that's still not enough. The revenge has to be personal.

"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again. (14.16)

Uh, well, you've tortured him into a living death? Chillingworth raises an important question, though—not "what evil have I done the man?" but "Who gets to decide what counts as sin?" Chillingworth doesn't think he's done anything wrong, but Dimmesdale has a different opinion: he sees Chillingworth's sin as way worse than his or Hester's.

"Thou hast escaped me!" [Chillingworth] repeated more than once. "Thou hast escaped me!"

"May God forgive thee!" said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply sinned!" (23.28-29)

After Dimmesdale dies, we don't see what happens to Chillingworth. But we do get the feeling that, eventually, he realizes that he's done some bad things. Giving his fortune to Pearl feels a lot like an apology and a confession. Maybe there's hope for him after all.