Free College Essays - Hidden Sin in Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter :: Scarlet Letter essays

The Scarlet Letter: Hidden Sin People often keep secrets in an effort to hide their sins from others. This is a risky since secrets have a way of manifesting themselves externally, and thus, letting everyone know of their owner’s sins. Hidden sin is a prominent theme in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter. Names like Chillingworth and Dimmesdale let the reader know how, in reality, these characters are, before ever really encountering them. Characters whom the reader will encounter in this novel are going through some type of dilemma on the inside, which begins to show itself in the exterior of the particular individual. In The Scarlet Letter, two studious individuals, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale, two of the main characters in the novel, each possess their own sins which begin to show themselves in their outermost features, each brought apon themselves for their own respective reasons. Roger Chillingworth's features begin to display his inward deformities externally as the novel progresses due to his attempts at finding the man who violated his marriage. When he is first seen in the novel, "there was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and become manifest by unmistakable tokens." He also has a left shoulder which is slightly higher than the right originally, which only gets more ugly and misshapen with the rest of his body. Chillingworth then takes up residence with Dimmesdale and begins his quest to punish the minister and find out the true identity of this man. After he begins his quest the townspeople observe "something ugly and evil in his face which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon him.† Soon his wife, Hester, finds "the former aspect of an intellectual a nd studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished and been succeeded by an eager searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look." Chillingworth, the injured husband, seeks no revenge against Hester, but he is determined to find the man who has violated his marrige: â€Å"He bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, and thou dost; but I shall read it on his heart.† Chillingworth comments: â€Å"Believe me, Hester, there are few things.