The Scarlet Letter

why does dimmesdale try to ignore the feelings of hatred and fear he sometimes feels toward chillingworth

Scarlet Letter. Chapter 11

Asked by
Last updated by jill d #170087
Answers 1
Add Yours

Dimmesdale felt the feeling he had for Chillingworth came from the guilt he carried in his own heart.

"... he looked doubtfully, fearfully—even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred—at the deformed figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman’s sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart’s entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause."

Source(s)

The Scarlet Letter/ Page 211