Chillingworth gives in to sin when he makes finding and torturing Hester's co-sinner the singular goal of his life. He tells her that "'[He] shall seek this man, as [he has] sought truth in books [....]. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!'" After several years of living in Boston, Chillingworth has patiently identified the Reverend Dimmesdale as a person of interest, and he moves in with him, ostensibly, in order to be his personal physician. However, it becomes clear soon enough that he really wants to keep a closer eye on the minister to see if he is Pearl's father. Soon after, townspeople began to notice a change that had come over him.
At first his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to the sight the oftener they looked upon him.
They suspected that his face was becoming "sooty" from the smoke created by the hellish fire in his laboratory. He seems to become even more deformed, even more evil looking as time passes because his moral corruption has begun to affect his physical features. The more evil he grows, the more evil he looks. He is frequently described as a leech, a parasite that drains the life-blood from its host, and this is a metaphor for what he plans to do to Hester's co-sinner: slowly drain the life from him and make him suffer as long as possible. This hateful endeavor shows how Chillingworth has given in to sin.
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