《红字》人物分析--专业英语八级作文

An Interpretation of Roger Chillingworth

学校：徐州师范大学专业：商贸英语姓名：陈伟“The Scarlet Letter”as the Hawthorne’s masterpiece is a world-known tragic novel. It shows different characters vividly through delicate description and profound psychological analysis. Roger Chillingworth, one of the main characters in this long story “The Scarlet Letter,” is an ugly old man. To some extent, the image undergoes a declining transformation from God, to Satan, and finally back to human nature.

At the beginning, it sounds offensive to say there are some factors of God in Chilingworth, at least not a born one. From the story, we know that he used to be “a pure and upright man,”“a wise and just man”. In the first few chapters, he seems to be flawless, who has absolute right to make judgment over other people. Latterly, he appears in the town when Dimmesdale is in poor health, and is hailed an angel by some townspeople, sent by God, just when a physician is badly needed. In front of him, other main characters are sinful, especially Hester Prynne and Authur Dimmesdale.

Next, just describing Roger Chillingworth as Satan because of his kinds of evil behaviors, which plays a key role in this vicious transformation. He is the producer of “A”, the embodiment of evil. Form the name Roger Chillingworth, we can find some implied meanings. Chillingworth’s partial tone is “chill”, which just tell readers his personality. When Chllingworth knows that his wife has relationship with Dimmesdale and is also pregnant, psychological revenge occurs to him. In order to punish Dimmesdale, he losts his reason and kindness, and takes pleasure of punishing him, what he does makes him become more and more sinful. However, when Dimmesdale died, he has not been happy for that, just like losting sopporting point, “so that he is completely wilted and faded...like uprooted weeds being withered under the bright sunshine.”

At last, after Chillingworth’s death, according to his testament, he bequeaths his considerable property to Hester’s daughter Pearl, e ven though she is not his own. This

action, I think, is confession to what he did previously, and representation of his return to human beings’ nature. Therefore, Chillingworth is not so selfish and evil in essence.

From the transformation of kind, to evil, finally back to nature, we can see that the character of Chillingworth is not only a flat one, but also a complex one, which need us to read and analysis deeply.