One example of
indirectforcomes when the
narrator describes his reaction to seeing Hester upon the scaffold.
The
narrator says,
A writhing horror twisted itself
across
his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one
little pause, with all its
wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face
darkened with some powerful emotion, which,
nevertheless, he so
instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single
moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After a brief space, the
convulsion grew
almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of
his nature.
In comparing his facial
expression to a snake, the narrator creates
athat seems designed to make us
think that Chillingworth has some evil in his nature. Snakes are
often
symbolic of evil as a result of the snake's role in the book of Genesis. Not only does
the
description hint at Chillingworth's evil, but it also implies that he
is...
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