“He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.”
Chillingworth promised Hester that he would have found the other sinner, the father of the child. His researches make him think that this person can be Dimmesdale. So he approaches the minister and starts to analyze him. He completely scans the minister mind, memory-by-memory, feeling-by-feeling. In this investigation it really seems he is looking for gold, he is greed to know. But what is looking for isn’t gold. It is a fault, a terrible fault of a man and in the end he won’t receive anything good from this work.
He examines Dimmesdale yes, and the discover of the sin is "gold" to him, but this gold sin should reflect you back to the gold on Hester's "A".
RispondiElimina