Who Is The Most Guilty In The Scarlet Letter

A man without purpose is a man without life, which in this story is what happens to Roger Chillingworth. The townspeople were very judgmental people with very little compassion. Pearl is the “sin child” who is the daughter of Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. Hester is the wife of Chillingworth, who has a child while he is gone, and later she wants to leave with Dimmesdale to live somewhere else, because she loves him. Dimmesdale is the great minister of Salem, Massachusetts and has committed a very large sin himself and has convicted other people of the same crime, making him a hypocrite.
Roger Chillingworth is the most sinful person in this story, due to all of his actions that are to get back at his wife Hester Prynne. The reasoning behind
this is because he truly does not consider what Hester wants when he leaves her, so he can learn the arts of medicine, leaving her to settle a new land all by herself. In the story it says, “...but it is time to quit this sketch; on which however, I should be glad to dwell at considerably more length.” (pg 12) And this ties into how when he is leaving there is a metaphorical rip in the quilt. This is an example of why he is upset when he got back because he was not fully aware of the pain and suffering that he causes Hester. To get through all of this pain and suffering she finds a man to cope with this and is pregnant with his daughter. Also another reason why he is the guiltiest character is because he never forgives anyone and is always persistent on getting revenge, even to the point that when he no longer has anyone to get revenge on, he dies. Which is a reason why Roger Chillingworth is the guiltiest character in the book.
Arthur Dimmesdale is also a very guilty character in this book, but not the guiltiest. The reason behind him being one of the most guilty characters in the book is because of the fact that he is a minister. This is significant because since he is a minister he is held to a higher standard than everyone else so that he can set a good example for them. So when he has an affair as a minister who is vastly admired throughout the town, then it is a very guilty thing, because it is him preaching that people need to come to God to repent for their sins, when he is committing one of the largest sins of all at the time, which is punishable by death. Because he has not told anyone about this so he is lying to his entire congregation, and he also will not publicly acknowledge them as his family or the sin in which he has committed. These are some of the reasons why Arthur Dimmesdale is not only a sinner, but a sinner and a hypocrite at the same time.
There is one last of the large sinners coming close behind Arthur Dimmesdale on the list of most guilty in the story for several reasons, but are helped by some of Hester’s actions.
These sins that have been committed are first the fact that she lets her husband Chillingworth stay behind to learn the Indian ways of medicine, when she needed him in colonizing a new part of the land with new people. Another thing that she is doing that makes her much more of a guilty character is when while her husband, Chillingworth, is gone, she aches for a man's presence in her life, so with thinking her husband is dead, as he has been gone for a long time, she sleeps with another man even though she knows it is wrong. The last thing that makes her guilty is the fact that she marries a man who is obviously older than she. But what makes things better for her is the fact that she raises the child all on her own and is very strong and proud of Pearl. She also serves her time and is allowed to take off her scarlet A, but does not, because it showed who she is. These are the reasons why Hester Prynne is a very guilty character in the book, which is based off of her cheating on Chillingworth and having a baby out of
wedlock.
This is talking about how Chillingworth is nothing without his revenge and has no other purpose in life than trying to take away things to make up for what other people are taking from him. This town is full of sinful people and they are all guilty in their own way, but for the most part Chillingworth is the guiltiest throughout the entire book.