The Sin of Chillingworth: Out of Good Comes Bad
             In the Columbine shootings last April, kids brought weapons to school, and killed many innocent lives. These kids destroyed lives because of revenge. Getting back at others was all that mattered to them. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, sin and revenge are main ideas. Chillingworth's character is similer to those of the kids at Columbine who killed others, because Chillingworth was also seeking revenge. "Chillingworth"is a pseudonym, which is assumed by Hester Prynne's aged scholar-husband, who in return of this sin of adultery against him, seeks revenge against the minister, or Dimmesdale. The greatest sinner of The Scarlet Letter is Roger Chillingworth.
             Hester sins when she commits adultery against her husband, Chillingworth. After having sent Hester ahead of him to Boston, Roger Chillingworth suffered captivity by Indians in his attempt to join her. Two years later, he arrives in Boston only to see his wife standing on the scaffold of shame holding in her hands a baby that was not his. "You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," said the townsman, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne, and her evil doings"(57). This means that because he does not belong to the town, Chillingworth doesn't know what Hester has done, so his first day back is surprising when he finds out his wife has committed adultery against him. On the other hand, Chillingworth is guilty the first time by marrying Hester, even when he knew that she did not love him and he was not the kind of man to make her a proper husband. "Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay"(69). Hawthorne suggests here that Chillingworth knows now that he was wrong to marry a woman who did not love him.
             However, far worse than that offense is th...