Today there are not many people that have a good strong set of morals, and yet there are some people that have to strong a set. Those with not enough morals commit crimes and do not have good reason or do not care about the consequences. While those with too strong of morals do not stick up for them selves or exact punishment on those that deserve it. There is a guy that I am reading about though, who has a good balance of morals and sticks to them.
His name is Roger Chillingworth, and he may seem to be a little evil at times or over obsessive about revenge, but he has the intentions of a good and wise sole. Roger was “clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume”, which may make him appear devilish, but it is only because he was taken hostage by Indians. In actuality Roger Chillingworth is a great scholar, so great in fact that he is described as “someone who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself”.
Roger had a furrowed visage, and his eyes were dim and blurred from reading to many books under lamplight. Roger Chillingworth was an older man and was mildly deformed, “It was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne that one of this man’s shoulder rose higher than the other. ” This deformity may also make him seem hideous or monster like, but it is just a sign of his age. Roger Chillingworth, although Native Americans captured him, was a refined gentleman, and spoke as one “then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood next to him, he addressed him, in a formal and courteous manner.
It is Roger’s nature to be calm and cool, and he has the great ability to control his emotions, “His face darkened with some powerful emotion, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. ” Roger Chillingworth has the “characteristic and quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging”, a doctor. Roger may have been wronged by his wife, but he, having such great morals, placed half of the blame on himself, “It was my folly and thy weakness.
Roger does not want to harm his wife because he feels that his “was the first wrong, therefore as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee, but the man lives who has wronged us both”, and it takes great will power and a good sense of what is just not to be angry at his wife. Roger doesn’t want to harm the baby either, however he doesn’t want a part of it because he feels that the child is Hester’s. In his own words “she is none of mine—neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father’s”.
But after Hester would not give the child medicine, and not wanting an innocent babe to suffer Roger administered the draught himself. Roger does not want to harm is wife as he feels that the “scale hangs fairly balanced” between them, or the baby, but he does want to get redemption. Roger is obsessed with finding the father of the baby, and he speaks strongly about it, “I shall seek this man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in alchemy” “sooner or later, he must needs be mine”, but the magistrates also want to find the man so it doesn’t make Chillingworth a bad person.
Roger Chillingworth wants to see this man tremble, but he wants to do it in a just way, “think not That I shall interfere with Heaven’s own method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine that i shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor his fame”, so Chillingworth isn’t going to break the law, or commit a sin, he just wants the father to get what he deserves. Roger Chillingworth may act coldly toward Hester and obsess on getting revenge, which to some people may seem like an unmoral want, but if he just lets the betrayer of his trust get away with sin isn’t that unmoral also?
Is it not the right thing to do to make a sinner give restitution for his sins, just as the magistrates have made Hester pay for her sin? Roger Chillingworth is going to do his moral duty by making the unknown father accept his punishment, but Roger will do it in such a way as not to infringe on the other morals that he has, therefore he has a good balance of rights and wrongs and is not evil, but a moral civil servant.
