In chapter 9 there is a passage sets up an interesting contrast between two types of men. What is this contrast, and how is it likely to shape the...

Chapter 9 of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter is titled “The Leech.” This title tells the reader a lot about the primary
antagonist in the novel, Roger Chillingworth. As a leech lives by feeding off the blood of
another, Chillingworth, under the guise of a physician, is going to devote his life to secretly
undermining and torturing Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale.

Hawthorne’s
intent, however, is not immediately evident. Most of the chapter discusses the budding
relationship between Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. It sounds like they will grow to be good
friends who have a positive effect on each other. In fact, Dimmesdale appreciates Chillingworth’s
intelligence and education:

"There was a fascination for the
minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation
of no moderate depth or scope, together with a range and freedom of ideas that he would have
vainly looked for among the members of his own profession."

In other
words, Dimmesdale is able to discuss ideas with Chillingworth that he can’t discuss with others
in the clergy.

Then, in the next paragraph, Hawthorne describes
Chillingworth, in his role as Dimmesdale’s doctor, this way:

"So
Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician—strove to go deep into his
patient’s bosom, delving among his principles prying into his recollections and probing
everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark
cavern."

It is at the end of the chapter that Hawthorne fully
develops the contrast between the two men that will continue throughout the rest of the novel. A
number of the townspeople began to suspect false motives on Chillingworth’s
part:

". . . it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the
Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old
Roger Chillingworth."

Here we see that the public perception of
Chillingworth is intuitively on target--they can see through him as Dimmesdale does not.
Conversely, and this illustrates the contrast between the two, Dimmesdale is nearly idolized by
his parishioners:

"The young divine [Dimmesdale], whose scholar-like
renown still lived in Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a
heavenly-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the ordinary term of life, to
do as great deeds for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for
the infancy of the Christian faith."

The final sentence of the
chapter clearly lays out the conflict that will unfold over the next 14
chapters:

"Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of
the poor minister’s eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory anything but
secure."

Hawthorne here is saying that Dimmesdale’s battle against
the guilt that is eating him alive, spurred on by the physical and mental warfare secretly being
waged by Chillingworth, is no sure thing—he might not win. In fact, he only partly wins the
battle. He does find redemption at the end of the story, but it is only as he succumbs to death,
leaving Hester and his daughter Pearl behind to face the world without
him.