The weeds of evil - Roger Chillingworth as an agent of the devil in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Roger Chillingworth seems to corrupt the earth around him. The author of this sample high school English essay argues that Chillingworth's foul purposes are represented by toxic plants in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Indeed, this example AP English essay reveals that Chillingworth's use of plants, and his relationship to dark places such as the forest are clear signs that he is an agent of evil. This sample essay's nice use of illustration in its introduction is particular highlight.

Dr. Evil: Chillingworth as the Devil's Advocate in The Scarlet Letter

A snake, an apple, and a tree: these are the elements of man's original sin, his first step on the path of the devil. The tree is where evil, the snake, abides; the apple represents temptation, the seed of wickedness that poisons man with sin. These aspects of nature, along with most other plant life, are frequently associated with evil, as shown by the forest in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the poison apple in Snow White. Nathaniel Hawthorne also uses vegetation, namely weeds, herbs, and poisonous plants, to establish Roger Chillingworth as Satan's agent of corruption in The Scarlet Letter.

Chillingworth's evil is apparent even to his sinful wife, Hester Prynne. Ac-cording to her, the physician is "a terror" (81), much "like the Black Man that haunts the forest" (81). Hester perceives him as a dark and terrifying evil that pervades a hellish wood. Chillingworth's frequent excursions into this hell are, in Hester's eyes, evidence of his demonic nature. The physician's foul, malevolent purpose is to corrupt, to "plant the germ of evil" (167) and "let the black flower blossom as it may" (168). This germ, or seed, is temptation, a desire to sin that grows inside the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale until it is barely containable. Chillingworth carefully nurtures this seed, which gives Dimmesdale the urge and capacity to do evil, and hopes that it will eventually cause the devout minister to transgress upon his own beliefs.

In order to instill the minister's thirst for sin, Chillingworth uses his home-made remedies as his means of corruption. He is always "in quest of roots and herbs" (161), and under his influence, these "weeds [are] converted into drugs of potency" (128). With these undesirable plants, Chillingworth concocts medicines that give him control over the weakened minds and bodies of his patients, thus opening them to temptation and corruption. Like when distilling these so-called remedies, the physician twists and contorts his patients' minds and morals to fit his uses. Dimmesdale, under the influence of Chillingworth's foul medication, has the urge and the power "to blight all the field of innocence…and develop all its opposite" (207). Tainted by his doctor's evil, Dimmesdale feels the need to violate his personal ethics and corrupt the innocent people in the village. Acting through him, Chillingworth attempts to turn this "field of innocence" into a weed-strewn meadow of sin. The physician, a "potent necromancer" (240), causes the stigma of sin to appear over Dimmesdale's heart "through the agency of…poisonous drugs" (240). Like a necromancer reanimating the dead, Chillingworth resurrects Dimmesdale's past sin of adultery from its resting place within the minister. He manipulates Dimmesdale through the use of virulent potions, bringing the minister to the point where his sin and corruption become manifest. The symbol that appears on his chest represents this corruption, brought on by the secrecy of his illicit relationship with Hester.

Sins kept secret, such as Dimmesdale's, appear after death as plants that cha-racterize the sins' nature. Chillingworth harvests the "ugly weeds" (129), found on a man's grave, that "typify…some hideous secret that was buried with him" (129). These undesirable plants symbolize the deceased's unconfessed evils and transgressions, for-bidden by the Puritan society in which he lived. Chillingworth, however, gathers these unsightly "sins" for components of the vile concoctions used in his corruption of Dim-mesdale. The minister, before his sin is revealed, wonders whether "the grass [will] ever grow on [his grave], because an accursed thing must there be buried" (139). He believes that only someone pure of heart and mind can merit such a healthful and attractive growth. Having sinned, Dimmesdale is worried that only repulsive weeds, such as those harvested by Chillingworth, will grow on his final resting place, telling everyone of the ungodly actions that the godly man buried there has performed. Hester believes that Chil-lingworth, on the other hand, will "sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot" (169) where "deadly nightshade…and whatever else of vegetable wickedness" (169) will grow and flourish. Because of Chillingworth's immeasurable evil, Hester feels that he will be assumed into the ground when he dies, contaminating the earth about him and al-lowing only plants as evil as him to grow there. The fact that the growths on his grave are not only unsightly, but deadly, exposes the truly vicious and evil nature of his actions.

In Hester's eyes, Chillingworth's evil is highly contagious; it seeps from his blackened heart, tainting the people around him. Having witnessed her husband's corrup-tion of Dimmesdale, Hester is certain that "the tender grass of early spring [will]…be blighted beneath [the doctor]" (168). In her opinion, Chillingworth's wickedness is so overpowering that his mere presence has the ability to plant a desire to sin within the young, weak, and innocent. Like a disease, his evil infects those near to him with an overwhelming feeling of temptation. As this temptation grows, the tainted lose sight of their morals, their values, and their beliefs, and open themselves to even greater depravity. Through their sinfulness and corruption, they become poisonous and wicked, like Chillingworth himself. From the start, Hester has no doubt that these "poisonous shrubs...[will] start up under his fingers" (168) and that "every wholesome growth" (168) will become "deleterious and malignant at his touch" (168). She feels that the physician's foul influence will disseminate, in time affecting every "wholesome" person, turning them to evil and spawning new agents of corruption. Eventually, when "there [is] no more Devil's work on earth for him to do" (242), Chillingworth "shrivel[s] away…like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun" (242). By successfully spreading his evil to Dimmesdale and to others, he fulfills his demonic purpose. With his mission complete, the doctor, like a repulsive weed, withers away to nothing, never again to spread corruption. Therefore, by tempting and by tainting, the malicious Roger Chillingworth acts as ad-vocate of the Devil's will.

Just as Chillingworth does in The Scarlet Letter, drug dealers and drug users corrupt men and women in modern society. Like Hawthorne's character, many of them distill their means of corruption from plants and administer them like medicine. Scores of their victims become addicted and ultimately devote their entire lives to spread-ing this evil. Through their actions, they create a seemingly endless cycle of corruption that many enter and few escape.

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