Extended Metaphors In The Custom House

One of the strikingly well used rhetorical devices that Hawthorne includes in “The Custom House” is imagery. He sets the mood at the Custom House by explaining the dull scenery, and these sketches lead the reader to make deeper connections about the story. “Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and

Hawthorne uses extended metaphors to convey his attitude about the US Federal government. He describes the eagle as “hovering” to relate to how the government is always there to protect Americans and uses “intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw” to show the harshness of the federal government. When Hawthorne states that the eagle “is apt to fling off her nestlings”, he means that the US federal government is not trustworthy and can ruin your life (like how the new form of government kicked him from his job).

In the passage from The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne uses detail, diction, and tone to express his view and attitude toward the Puritan community.

Hawthorne, after exposing the surprised people to the sable veil, develops the protagonist through a description of some of his less exotic and curious characteristics:

The Glass Castle is a memoir of Jeannette Walls’ experience and her tempestuous upbringing. Her father was a charismatic and intelligent man, but when he drank he was dishonest and couldn’t hold a job. Their mother was a free spirit who felt confined by the responsibilities of motherhood, and sought refuge in her blind optimism. Without steady parental figures, Jeannette and her siblings turned to each other for support. Eventually, they made their way to New York to build lives for themselves. Their parents followed, choosing to be homeless.

These characters had weight, and the audience could feel sympathetic towards the them. The Hawthorne makes the audience sympathetic towards the characters. In one instance the character in the story stated “The black veil, though it covers only our pastor’s face throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him ghostlike from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?” (lines 138-140) This makes us feel the reactions of the characters.

Symbolism plays a major role in the “Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It influences the setting of the story and it complements the moral message. The minister, Mr. Hooper, has a lot of faith and is very committed to helping the society to be more faithful and closer to God. He lives a very harsh live being rejected by society and goes through unpleasant moments to achieve his original goal. When he decides to wear the black veil, he was not trying to be mysterious and create a gloomy environment like he did; he had much more than that in mind. The Black Veil represents the thought of the puritans that sin was an inexcusable mistake, the secret sin and dark side in each individual, and he uses

Hawthorne could feel her arousal through the thin fabric of her dress, and panties she wore underneath. His body pressed to hers, with the whip between her thighs, and his palm against her. His eyes glowed with lust, and the direction which slipped from his mouth was uttered in a guttural, breathless whisper. His need to see her naked, to touch and spank and flog her was as great, if not greater, than her own. "Bend over, and remove the dress." His free hand hooked into her hair, as stared directly at her gorgeous face, unblinking, expecting her to acquiesce to his demand. That's what she desired wasn't it; what she'd asked for, and wanted from the moment she'd discovered the X on the wall?

“From the intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning on the outskirts of the crowd a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts.”(Hawthorne, 52).

16. Replenish (421) -to make full or complete again, as by supplying what is lacking, used up, etc.

Romanticism is the movement in literature that emphasizes inspiration, selfhood, and the authority of the individual. The purpose of “The Custom House” is that it provides the framework for the main idea of The Scarlet Letter and it also describes Hawthorne’s life. The narrator, who shares similar traits with Nathaniel Hawthorne, takes a post as the “chief executive officer,” or surveyor, of the Salem Custom House. The author’s attitude toward his former job is that the building extremely run down and the Custom House serves the small ship traffic going through the port, but it is usually a quiet place requiring only minimal work. Hawthorne describes his fellow workers as elderly and have been working at the Custom House their how lives. The only reason why they are there is through family connections and they repeatedly tell the stories. So, what I take from this is that he did not like his old job, the reason being is that he only speaks negative about everything relating to his former job. Hawthorne addresses the reader directly and it causes an effect by showing that he 's trying to connect with all sorts of people. He describes the letter as “ scarlet, gold-embroidered piece of cloth in the shape of the letter ‘A’.” Which makes me feel that if they put all that time into making it look nice, that there is some type of importance related to it.

In the novel The Jungle, the Author Upton Sinclair writes about a failed attempt to achieve the American dream by a Lithuanian family. The story takes place in the city of Chicago in a place called Packingtown. Most immigrants like Jurgis and his family go to packingtown thinking they will be able to achieve this so called “dream” but shortly come to realize that it's impossible. While the novel's exposition prepares the reader to believe the American dream will be the main theme later detail suggest Sinclairs considers socialism to be the important message because of his Authorial voice and its extended metaphors,establishing its primary purpose is that of Propaganda. In the Novel, Jurgis and his family move to Chicago in hopes of achieving

The House of the Seven Gables is a metaphorical, symbolic, and romantic. The house and the characters are all symbols for something greater and can be linked back to society. These symbols still have influence today, because the problems the Pyncheon family faced still goes on today. That problem that plagued the family for generation is greed.

Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is a controversial play focusing on the marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer. The play is filled with symbols that represent abstract ideas and concepts. These symbols effectively illustrate the inner conflicts that are going on between the characters. Henrik Ibsen’s use of symbolism such as the Christmas tree, the locked mailbox, the Tarantella, Dr. Rank’s calling cards, and the letters allows him to give a powerful portrayal to symbolize aspects of characters and their relationship to each other.

Shakespeare’s work is among the hardest to read because of its supposed complexity and sophistication. The language used in the Early Modern Era is different than that of the Post Modern Era. Audiences that saw the performances were aural learners and were able to pinpoint certain tones and facial expressions that readers may not detect through words. Watching the plays performed provided better feedback than readings do (Palfrey 10-11). Metaphors, implicit or explicit, are figures of speech that help compare two unlike things and are not designed for literal intake. Yet, with Shakespeare’s work, metaphors should be taken literally. According to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, however, this technique of comparison allows metaphors to simultaneously highlight and hide certain attributes and/or qualities about the thing(s) being compared to (12-13). The highlighting and hiding of metaphors gives readers more insight into what Shakespeare may have meant at the time or even more so in what context did the people of the Elizabethan Age use language (Palfrey 11). Two important components of metaphors that do the highlighting and hiding are the vehicle and the tenor; each can be implicit or explicit as well. The metaphor in question emphasizes both the importance and unimportance of Lavinia’s character.