The US Government In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Custom House

In a passage from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The House of the Seven Gables, he reveals the complex character that is Judge Pyncheon. Hawthorne suggests that the virtuous appearance Judge Pyncheon exhibits covers the immoral reality that lies behind his lies. Hawthorne leads the reader to speculate on Judge Pyncheon’s questionable character through his skeptical tone and syntax.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the greatest American authors of the nineteenth century. He published his first novel Fanshawe, in 1828. However, he is widely known for his novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. His novel, The Scarlet Letter, can be analyzed from historical, psychological and feminist critical perspectives by examining his life from the past, as well as his reflections while writing The Scarlet Letter. In order to understand the book properly, it’s necessary to use these three perspectives.

The Dark Side of Judge Pyncheon in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novel, The House of the Seven Gables

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

He uses the rhetorical device catachresis, or a hyperbolic metaphor and consonant blends when describing his ancestors to stress his already made emphasis on his views of them. There can be little doubt of Hawthorne's disdain for the stern morality and rigidity of the Puritans, and he imagines his predecessors' disdainful view of him: unsuccessful in their eyes, worthless and disgraceful. "A writer of story books!" But even as he disagrees with his ancestor's viewpoint, he also feels an instinctive connection to them and, more importantly, a "sense of place" in Salem. Their blood remains in his veins, but their intolerance and lack of humanity become the subject of his novel.

Thoreau’s diction utilizes readers’ connotations of words and phrases to spark independent thought and encouragement of individuals to challenge and to investigate beliefs. One such connotation is when Thoreau discusses the government and its control over the people, comparing the government’s tactics to “black arts” (Thoreau 3). The phrase “black arts” typically refers to black magic, which is the idea of invoking evil spirits to be used antagonistically. By using that phrase, Thoreau demonizes the government by comparing its tactics to a fairy tale-like villain, solidifying his view of the government as purely diabolical with no redeeming qualities or factors to it. This demonization makes the government become something seen as negative for the country. Thus, Thoreau aggressively challenges how the government is viewed by the public and whether the fairly positive light it is given is justified or not. Similarly, Thoreau uses the phrase “a man the American government can make a mere shadow and

The purpose of this chapter is to give sort of a background to the novel. It introduces Salem as well as Puritan society and the Custom house. The author's attitude toward his old job and workers is mainly positive, giving descriptions of the groups and people. He puts them in either a mundane or positive light by showing their qualities even if they are strange. An example of this is his description of the General's overwhelming kindness or the President's love of past meals (Hawthorne, 284). Even though they are seen as positive, the author still shows they no longer belong at the Custom house. He states " [they knew] they ought to have given place to younger men" (Hawthorne, 280). He sees them generally as senile and unfit for their jobs, but still as people. Because the author address

   Based on the evaluations of literary critics, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” contains both an external and an internal conflict, about equally treated in the tale. It is the intent of this essay to explore both types of conflict as presented in the story.

In the first Chapter of The Scarlet Letter, "The Prison-Door", the reader is immediately introduced to the people of Puritan Boston. Hawthorne begins to develop the character of the common people in order to build the mood of the story. The first sentence begins, "A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes" (Hawthorne 45). Hawthorne's use of vivid visual images and his Aaccumulation of emotionally weighted details" (Baym xii) creates sympathy for the not yet introduced character, Hester Prynne, and creates an immediate understanding of the harshness of the Puritanic code in the people. The images created give the freedom to imagine whatever entails sadness and morbidity of character for the reader; Hawthorne does not, however, allow the reader to imagine lenient or cheerful people.

Hawthorne’s work takes America’s Puritan past as its subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses the material to the greatest effect. The Puritans were

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man who was both plagued and absorbed by the legacy of the Puritans in New England. He was related to John Hathorne, a Puritan judge during the infamous Salem Witch trials of 1692. In The Scarlet Letter, his fictional account of mid-17th century Boston presents an opportunity to examine different themes commonly associated with Puritans. Particularly the nature of sin, personal identity and the repression of natural urges are themes that appear repeatedly through the novel. While his account of this time period may not be completely historically accurate, it is indicative of the persistent thematic influence of Puritan culture on American and New England society.

Frederick William Robertson once said, “There are three things in the world that deserve -- no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.” Ushering in the Romantic era in literature, this quote stood as the foundation for many transcendental pessimists; Nathaniel Hawthorne was no exception. As described in The Custom House, the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne heavily disapproves of his own extreme Puritan past and, in fact, heavily critiques it throughout the entire novel. However, while not directly, Hawthorne criticizes Puritan culture and ideals by exposing their sin in the community. He does this in a number of ways, but readers can plainly see that he chastises the Puritans by portraying them as religious extremists, intelligently

Hawthorne characterizes the government as an overbearing dominant through the usage of extended metaphor. For example, Hawthorne utilizes the American eagle to symbolize the US Federal Government in order to better convey his thoughts. In the beginning, Hawthorne describes the eagle to be something that is strong and heroic with the intention to look out for the safety of the people. Eventually, he further explains that the people look to the eagle for comfort and rely on it for their safety. Hawthorne then reveals his attitude about the US by sharing that the eagle isn’t looking out for the good of the people with that “great tenderness” that the people seek and that the eagle is willing to abandon “her nestlings” whenever she pleases.

Hawthorne uses dysphemism, where instead of calling someone a burden to him or his society, he calls them torpid creatures and imbeciles implying that they are far worse than those merely being a burden. There is by all accounts a contention seething inside, keeping Hawthorne from beginning his story. It goes past not having room schedule-wise to compose. Rather, the question is whether the story merits telling in the writing society or general public. This reflection gives an artistic reply about the hugeness of "The Custom-House": it adds import and weight to the story to come. Hawthorne recommends that the story conflicts with the social mores that preserve order among the people.

He himself had declared it to be a ‘romantic’ genre along with gothic interests and it being a carrier of Puritan History of England. For the obvious reasons this novel deals with issues concerning the times of mid-1850 wherein Hawthorne has juxtaposed “poverty and riches”, “aristocracy and democracy”, “youth with age”, “greed with unselfishness”, “complex with simple”, “appearance with reality”, “pride with humbleness”, “the isolated with un-isolated” (Dillingham, 59) all these parallels are supported by detailed characterizations of almost all main characters in the text. Hawthorne has provisioned and facilitated his characters with an independent backbone with which they support his themes and carry them on their own shoulders. The text in its romantic narrative fashion has been well-crafted to involve various themes which Nathaniel Hawthorne wished to include in this 1851 published Gothic work. It will not be incorrect to put forth the view that Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables is a representative of the era and society of that time. He has accurately projected the concerned subjects of that time and how they used to affect the humans of that period. The juxtapositions too are echoes of the society and mirror the basics of whatever contrived into being the fundamentals of that society. Therefore, the themes of this text are majorly colored by the real world of that period and the