that he was once a warm, intellectual fellow, has been transformed in the name of revenge into an evil, malicious sort of creature. He is well aware that he is becoming evil, and yet tells Hester “it is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may!” (160). In the act of avenging a transgression upon himself, he commits an even greater sin by “violating, in cold blood, the sanctity of the human heart” (179). In the end, Chillingworth has become a fiend, his heart so twisted by his own doings that he is, without a doubt, but a shadow of the compassionate man he once was. Hester and Chillingworth did sin against him, but it is his own hypocrisy that changes him.The scarlet letter is the most prominent symbol in the novel. Hawthorne uses it to convey an array of different meanings, and its identity, as well as the wearer’s, changes over the course of the novel. In the beginning, it stands for adultery and makes Hester an outcast. Although it isolates her, it allows her to see the shame in the hearts of others. “The very law that condemned her-a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm-had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy” (72). With the scarlet letter, Hester realizes the hypocrisy of the town in branding her for her sin, which is, in fact, their sin as well. It is meant to keep her down, and yet it cannot chain her spirit. By Hester’s own actions, the townsfolk eventually come to see the letter as denoting her as able, not as an adulteress.Irony is one of the most effective devices Hawthorne utilizes throughout the novel. For example, although he is the father of pearl, whom the townsfolk look upon as a demon child, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is revered as saintly. Dimmesdale, however, sees himself as a vile, low creature, questioning himself “whether the grass would ever grow on [his grave], because an ac...
