The Scarlet Letter: The Hidden Sin People often keep secrets in an attempt to hide their sins from others. This is risky since secrets have a way of manifesting themselves externally and, therefore, making their owner's sins known to all. Hidden sin is a major theme in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Names like Chillingworth and Dimmesdale let the reader know what these characters are actually like, before actually meeting them. The characters that the reader will meet in this novel are going through some sort of internal dilemma, which begins to manifest itself on the outside of the particular individual. In The Scarlet Letter, two studious individuals, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale, two of the novel's main characters, each possess their own sins that begin to show themselves in their most external characteristics, each carried forward for their own respective reasons. Roger Chillingworth's features begin to outwardly show his internal deformities as the novel progresses due to his attempts to find the man who violated his marriage. When we see him for the first time in the novel, "there was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had cultivated his mental part so much that it could not help but model the physical one on itself and manifest itself with unmistakable signs ". He also has a left shoulder that is slightly higher than his original right, which only becomes uglier and more deformed with the rest of his body. Chillingworth then settles down with Dimmesdale and begins his quest to punish the minister and discover this man's true identity. After beginning their search for him, the townspeople observe "something ugly and evil in his face which they had not noticed before, and which became still more evident to the eye, the more often they looked at him." Soon his wife, Hester, discovers that "the former appearance of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered about him, had entirely vanished and was replaced by an eager and inquiring, almost ferocious gaze , but carefully guarded." Chillingworth, the wounded husband, seeks no vengeance against Hester, but is determined to find the man who violated his marriage: "He bears no letter of infamy engraved on his clothes, and you do. ; but I will read it on his clothes." Chillingworth comments: “Believe me, Hester, there are few things.