Important Quote

"When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips." (42) This is when the village surrounded the scaffold to behold the ultimate sinner, Hester Prynne. The narrator starts by describing a man who seemed to have important significance to Hester; but we were only bestowed a limited amount of information about this suspicious stranger. It did not take long before this man, later revealed as Roger, and Hester engaged in eye contact. Without hesitation  Roger raised his finger close to his lips, as in to warn Hester to not say a word. He is later informed that the woman who stands before the people has actually cheated on her husband, who has been away for about two years now. For the narrator to focus on a man who has never been mentioned before in the previous chapters, implies to the readers that he will be one of the main characters throughout the rest of the novel. This scene makes it quite obvious to us, readers, that this man is keeping valuable information away from us. Until this point, The Scarlet Letter resembled to an unfinished puzzle that missed two important pieces: the acknowledgement of Hester's husband and secret lover. Therefore, we can conjecture that Roger Chillingworth must be one of these two puzzle pieces. Unsurprisingly, he is later brought forth as Hester's husband, whose new purpose in life is to make baby Pear's mysterious biological father suffer.