The theme, "Within each person exists the capability for both good and evil" is illustrated through Roger Chillingworth. Originally born Roger Prynne, he lived in England as an old and lonely scholar dehumanized by a life of abstruse studying. He makes the mistake of marrying a young wife, a generation younger that he is. He sends her to America, to the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, with instructions to live quietly until he arrives. Due to "grievous mishaps by sea and land", and over a year's captivity by Indians, his intended arrival was delayed. When he finally arrives, he finds Hester Prynne, his wife, being publicly exposed as an adulteress. He sees Hester holding the child of another man. After his discovery, "Chillingworth moves closer to the scaffold and imperiously bids her to name the father of her child" (pg 113). Disappointed that his hope of gaining Hester's affection upon arrival was destroyed, he also hated the man that gained that affection. Unwilling to be associated with her sin, he announces himself as a physician, and takes the new name Roger Chillingworth. Soon after Hester is allowed off of the scaffold, Chillingworth treats her and the baby with some medicine. While doing so he tells Hester to keep his identity a secret and tells her about the anger he has inside. "Although his anger was understandable and forgivable, it became a fatal sin when he nourished it"(pg 209). Chillingworth slowly evolves from a man capable of love, to a man capable of the greatest sin in the novel: Violating the sanctity of the human heart.
             Chillingworth begins to suspect that Dimmesdale is Pearl's (Hester daughter) father when Reverend Wilson and Governor Billingham are trying to take Pearl away from Hester. Dimmesdale gives an eloquent representation for Hester, and Chillingworth says "You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness"(121). It is with this suspicion that Chillingworth begins to show "special interest" in Dimmes...