The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story set in the Puritan city of Boston about a young woman named Hester Prynne who committed adultery and was discovered by the Puritan government and religious authorities because she had become pregnant and had a baby. Her punishment was 3 hours on the pillory platform in the market square, where quite a few people watched her. She was also condemned to leave a mark of her sin, a scarlet letter A, on her chest for the rest of her life, which was certainly the greater of the two punishments. The man with whom she committed adultery, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, is a cultured and highly renowned clergyman. Everyone in the village loves him dearly and considers him a saint. Hester Prynne's (ex)husband, returns from England where he stayed during the period of Hester Prynne's infidelity, and discovers what Hester did in her absence, whereupon he calls himself Roger Chillingsworth (his real name is never mentioned in the novel) and makes Hester swear never to reveal her true identity to anyone. Roger Chillingsworth later discovers that Arthur Dimmesdale was the one Hester Prynne slept with in his absence, and then proceeds to take revenge on the poor, tortured priest's fragile mental state. Roger Chillingsworth later became a truly evil and formidable enemy. He became obsessed with seeking justice against the man who had wronged him, but in doing so he stooped completely and committed injustice against Arthur Dimmesdale. A key element of the story is the weakened and ill state of Arthur Dimmesdale. Roger Chillingsworth is an expert doctor who is called to help him. In doing so, he became Arthur's close friend as well as his doctor. Chillingsworth even got to...... halfway down the page ......that he hadn't noticed that the poor man had already suffered too much, that he still continued to attack him psychologically, shows that rather than justice, he is really obtaining the opposite, an injustice. Kicking someone when they are down as they are doing cannot be right, but unjust and evil. Thus, Roger Chillingworth sought justice, but did not find it. He did everything he could to torment Arthur Dimmesdale but in doing so he became, as he called himself, a demon. He made himself an enemy of Dimmesdale and was hated by him. His quest did not amount to a search for justice, but rather a dehumanization of himself and an injustice to Dimmesdale. Arthur Dimmesdale ultimately escaped his grasp through death. Afterwards, with nothing left to hold on to in life, Roger Chillingsworth virtually withered into nothingness and, as the book says, vanished...