In The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne uses several dynamic characters to develop the plot of the novel. A dynamic character is a character that changes or evolves through the course of a story. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth were all dynamic characters. The character that changed the most through the course of the story, though, was Roger Chillingworth.
             In chapter three we learned that Hester's husband was "a learned man of English birth". He was "calm in temperament, kindly,... and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man." In the town he posed as Roger Chillingworth, a physician learned in both the "Christian medicines" and the medicines from "herbs and roots" used by the Native Americans of that region. He could not be blamed for his interest in his wife's affairs, and began his search for knowledge "with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth... instead of human passions and wrongs inflicted upon himself."
             When Chillingworth discovered that Dimmesdale was his wife's "partner" in her offense, his desire "of truth" was noticeably warped. He began to torture the minister, "playing upon" his conscience and worsening his guilt. By chapter 14, Chillingworth had "transform(ed) himself into a devil" by "devoting himself to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture and deriving his enjoyment thence." He "dug into the poor minister's heart, like a miner searching for gold", yet all the while he deceived Dimmesdale, posing as a "kind, watchful, sympathizing, but never intrusive friend." Chillingworth realized that he was "a mortal man with once a human heart, (that had) become a fiend for his especial torture"; he had become so evil that he knew he could not turn back.
             By the end of the story, Chillingwor
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