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On Reserve
Spotlight -
Nathaniel Hawthorne
by Artur Wielgus
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)
Nathaniel Hawthorne's work belongs to an American Romanticism
movement. He is well known for his tales of the nation's colonial
history.
Many of his short stories have been read as moral allegories
influenced by his Puritan background and sensitive humor.
He had famous friends: Longfellow from college years, Emerson was
his neighbor, Thoreau who lived in Emerson’s house for a couple of
years, Melville, Poe and others. What also helped him was his wife
Sophia, who admired his writing jewels.
The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
masterpiece. The novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who has a
child with Arthur Dimmesdale, an Episcopal Church minister. She
refuses to name the father and is required to wear a scarlet letter
in public: A for adultery. Community officials attempt to take her
daughter Pearl away from Hester, but with the help of Arthur
Dimmesdale, mother and daughter stay together. They lead a life of
seclusion from society. When Pearl is about eight years old, her
father, haunted by a guilty conscience and pressed by Hester, makes
with her an agreement that he will leave the ministry and escape
with Hester and Pearl to Europe on a ship. At the religious
celebration, the minister makes a public confession, acknowledging
being a father of Pearl and then he has a heart attack and dies.
After that Hester and Pearl emigrate to Europe.
In the short story of Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne depicts
renegades from Christian religion who turn to be pagan worshipers.
In darkness, they set aflame the tops of four trees as candles in
the forest, put offerings on the large stone and during a rceremony
baptize new converts. “Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies
were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their
native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to
English witchcraft”.
In the Procession of Life, he says “Death levels us all into one
great brotherhood and that another state of being will surely
rectify the wrong of this.”
Hawthorne keeps the reader’s attention with a vivid, imaginative and
descriptive style, which is in full accordance with his themes. His
descriptions are very picturesque and he has the hues in his
peculiar and pure tone of writing.
Pilgrims, the people who were persecuted because of their religion
and became emigrants, were very spiritual people.
May the gray champion come with the pledge that America’s sons and
daughters will vindicate their divine ancestry.
© Arthur Wielgus 2007
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