Nathaniel Hawthorne Essay

After the publication of The crimson Letter in the year 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne was ac knowledge as oneness of the to the highest degree portentous source in the United States. He has the ability to write like a ro patchcer subject to probe the inner mysteries and in any case as a realist who burn strike to the reader the Ameri dirty dog char shapeer and admit it off (Gollin, par. 1). This means that in the early to the middle-part of the nineteenth century Hawthorne as author loafer be depended upon as a guide, able to show how America was shaped by the barons of pietism, migration, and opposite forces drop the ballgular to the New World. Hawthorne is non a spectral writer exactly the reader sight get more(prenominal) from his work when it comes to the study of religion and sacred men than by reading a apparitional treatise. The following go a behavior psychoanalyse the man and the writer as he became instrumental in how the world came to face and unde rstand nation building the Ameri brush aside way.Biography            He was born in capital of Oregon, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804. He came from a family of Puritans. His father was a sea lord who died when he was four age grey-haired and so his mother brought him up in concert with his two sisters. For a few years he lived in Raymond, Maine precisely he was forced to go back to Salem so that he can spend a penny for college. It was at this fourth dimension that he knew he was going to be a writer except at the same time realized that it would be difficult to exonerate a living compose adenosine monophosphately time (Golin, par. 2). He would always croak about the concomitant that he was everlastingly forced to spend time and brawn to make money to buy carbohydrate sooner than to devote a keen deal of his time doing the thing that he really loved. However, circumstances pr even offted him from doing so, especially whe n he decided to marry and raise a family.            still when he had the means and the probability to write, Hawthorne began to show his brilliance as a man of garners. Even his early kit and boodle like Young Goodman Brown and Twice-told Tales bringed approbation from critics (Golin, par. 3). Nonetheless, Hawthorne still could non find a way to make makeup novels a full-time job. He was forced to gain semipolitical ap period of timements so he can consecrate a decent source of income from working in perplexs like the customs duty House. Yet since he was a political appointee he was at the clemency of those who are in power. In 1849 he was dismissed and he fought to be reinstated. (Golin, par. 7).  He was rejected once more unless this failure became a stepping lapidate for him because it was in any case during this time that he completed The ruddy Letter, a novel that would catapult him to fame.    & nbsp       It was The violent Letter that made him famous as a writer who chose to express himself in the genre of romance. He was a unique writer in the sense that he spoke against the excesses of the Puritan tradition (Idol & adenosine monophosphate Jones, p. 471). But what made his works so penetrating and so influential was the fact that he was an insider. He was no run-of-the-mine journalist who merely investigated the character f uprightnesss of the Puritans, he was one of them, the descendant of one of the most feared and respected Puritan. Moreover, he lived in Salem, the infamous location of the Salem witch trials.            He would later learn about the adumbrate details of the paranoia that swept the region and he would alike come to know his ancestors who govern the area with an iron fist. His embarrassment to be associated with them and the horrors that he discovered forever influenced his typogr aphy style and the vitrine of subject event that he would like to deal with in his future writings. His inspiration for doing so was describe clearly in one of his autobiographical works and there he revealed his proneness to remove the stain that embellished the Hawthorne touch and he wroteHe was a soldier, legislator, judge he had all the Puritanic traits both grievous and evil. He was likewise a mordant persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who perk up remembered him in their histories His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit,and made himself so fulgent in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood whitethorn fairly be avow to have left a stain upon him (Woodberry, p. 124).By writing about the Puritans and the good as headspring as the bad things they did provided a way out for Hawthorne, a type of healing for the soul and the emotions. It can be argued that he was not very eminent of his heritage but by writing about it he can have the ability to rectify so me of the damages created by his ancestors. His ancestors thought that everything they did was righteous, but Hawthorne, writing generations later would like to set the ledger straight that although the Puritans help build a New World their religious views can sometimes do more scathe than good.The Scarlet Letter            Everything that he knew and everything that he snarl he poured out in the writing of The Scarlet Letter. This is perhaps the mind wherefore this novel is considered a masterpiece. In the second chapter of the tale Hawthorne was able to bewitch the imagination of the readers when he brought them to a place where severe visitment was accustomed to those who disobeyed the law no matter how trivial it whitethorn sound in the hearing of modernistic men. Hawthorne said that a lazy servant, a disobedient child, a person with divergent religious views, and even an Indian who may have behaved not in unity to the cus toms of the land can begin punishment that should have been reserved entirely for criminals and not those who just wanted to play their God-given freedom to live and pursue happiness.            Hawthorne accordingly explained why the people living in that particular village acted so gratingly and he wrote Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor baron look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of annoying infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of final stage itself (Hawthorne, Chap. 2). In the opening scene a adult female named Hester Prynne emerged from prison clutching her baby in her arms and with a scarlet letter A embroidered on her bosom, symbol of ignominy according to the norms and values of old Massachusetts.            The re aders felt the harshness of the sentence but lenity move arounded to anger just as quickly when they discovered that a charwoman like Hester Prynee could not commit the sin of adultery without a offshoot mate. Aside from that the appendage of Hesters husband who apparently decrepit her added some other reason as to the read for clemency. But there is more. The two-timing(a) partner was a respected clergyman who was so full of hypocrisy that he even joined with the inquisitors to force out from Hester the name of the man who committed adultery with her.            When Hester did not answer the clergyman as well as those who condemned her to a life of disgrace and misery the baloney reached another level of complexity. The woman considered to be the most infernal in the village has transcended her accusers by congruous more righteous than them because she chose to love her enemies.Hesters actions mirrored the one felt by Haw thorne. He was not anti-religious or anti-God. oneness can even argue that Hawthorne believed in God and the Bible but he only when could not accept why men of shallow thinking was given the power and the influence to teach the cry of God without learning source forbearance and wisdom. Instead of learning the intricacies of the law and the knowledge on how to dispense of punishment in the most cruel and inhumane manner, these ministers should have learned wisdom and love first. By doing so they could have been better servants of God.            It is not hard to see Hawthornes allusion to another famous Bible story when an adulterous woman was brought to Jesus to be judged. The woman was brought to Jesus simply because the Nazarene had earn the reputation for being merciful to the point that the religious leaders of his day taken his actions as heresy and a raucous demonstration of unfaithfulness to the Jewish religion and to their traditions. By bringing the woman who was caught in adultery, they sought to trap Jesus and to force him to act in accordance to the police force and if he refused then he pull up stakes be condemned like the woman in front of her.            At this point one can appreciate the complexity of Hawthornes writing. He was not simply bragging(a) an indictment against the Puritans, he was excessively arduous to show them how it should have been done, not using the authors righteousness but using the same Bible against them. The Pharisees who was attempt to trap Jesus was the ancient recitation of the Puritans who could not see the largish picture, they can only saw the legal aspect, not the person in front of them. And so going back to the Bible story and Jesus this is what the religious leaders said to himThey made her stand before the concourse and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say? (John 83-5, NIV)Once again the woman was alone standing in the lot of men. Where was the man who committed adultery with her? Where was the man who committed the act of adultery with Hester? The religious leaders did not wish to punish the woman because they sincerely believed that she should be punish but they went to great lengths to humiliate her simply because they wanted to uphold an ancient tradition, to carry through a way of life. Furthermore, there is a deeper lesson that the author wanted everyone to know the union must abide by the rules and regulations because those who give not participate or those who will not consent are considered to be as blamable as the sinner.But Jesus was not afraid of the religious leaders, their accusations, and their condemnation. Jesus instead allowed them to see the macro picture that all of them are guilty of secret sins. It may be big or small but if the residential d istrict focused on punishment rather than in building each other up then they will simply destroy the way of life that they so cherish. They can stone the woman but the one who will cast the first stone must be unexceptionable because the moment he would hurl the first stone his neighbor will turn on him for he too deserve to be punished.Conclusion            The brilliance of Hawthorne can be seen in so umteen levels. He was a gifted writer able to describe and analyze the way the Puritans had shaped the New World. But instead of simply criticizing them for their legalistic ways he also offered a way out for them by creating indirect references to the Word of God and when he used it as a behind for his writings he was not only able to rectify the misdeeds of the past, he was also able to show there is a better way to build a new nation.Works CitedGollin, Rita. Nathaniel Hawthorne. In The heathland Anthology of American Literature. 5th Accessed 21 July 2010 from http//college.cengage.com/ slope/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/early_nineteenth/hawthorne_na.htmlHawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Accessed 21 July 2010 fromhttp//www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/scarletletter/ holy place Bible. The Gospel of John. The New International Version. Accessed 22 July 2010            from http//www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%208&version=NIVIdol, John & Buford Jones. Nathaniel Hawthorne The contemporaneous Reviews. New YorkCambridge University Press, 1994.Woodberry, George. Nathaniel Hawthorne. SC BiblioBazaar, 2008.