Author Study on “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of the Seven Gables” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne is a very unique and distinctive author. By reading some of his works, it is very easy to recognize Hawthorne’s writing style. For this author study, of all of his novels, I have chosen only two books to review. The first book I read is “The Scarlet Letter”. The second book I read was “The House of the Seven Gables”. Both books are undoubtedly written by Hawthorne and are very fine pieces of work. The novels are exceptional reads and their similarities only heighten my satisfaction.
First, I will compare the dialogue and writing style of each book to each other. In the “Scarlet Letter”, Hawthorne uses dialogue that is complex…show more content… In “The Scarlet Letter”, Hester Prynne committed a sin that was an understandable human one which arose from desire for the simple human luxury available to all. At this point, Chillingworth is capable of moral forgiveness and is still able to rejoin the normality of mankind. Ultimately, he is led astray into his own sinful ways in which he pries into Dimmesdale’s unwilling heart. In “The House of the Seven Gables”, this sin based theme seems to be portrayed as an inherited curse. Greed pushes both Colonel and Jaffrey to encourage the persecution of a less powerful man, and then basically takes his land. This sin is seen as a curse throughout the book as it influences all that the living does. Both novels exquisitely show how the sinful ways of others can greatly affect other peoples’…show more content… To me, the most obvious use of symbolism in the two books would be in “The Scarlet Letter”. In “The Scarlet Letter”, the author symbolizes adultery to Hester. To the Puritan community, the letter ‘A’ stands for a mark of just punishment. The most obvious symbol to me in “The House of the Seven Gables” is the house. It almost seems as if it is humanlike. When Phoebe recognizes that every object in the house responded to her consciousness, as if an actual human were in it, the house comes to stand for the individual heart, whereas her emotions are kept away in a certain place. The darkness of the old house is actually quite impressive and very significant to the story. The house contains shadowy emblems of the past, each representing evils of the Pyncheon family. Notably, the contents of the house are also very symbolic and significant to the story. The chair is a reminder of the old Colonel and also the connection to Maule’s curse. The portrait and the map are indistinctly visible tokens of the Colonel’s unbending austerity and greediness. I personally think that Nathaniel Hawthorne did an outstanding job symbolizing certain components in his