Chapter Five

Hawthorn (1804-1604) （霍桑）

A Romanticism writer, born on the fourth of July, 1804. Two of his ancestors were leading figures in the 17^th C, and one was notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692. Gradually, the family fortune declined. Young Hawthorne took shame upon himself on account of these two ancestors and their misdeeds led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life. So one of the major theme of his works is to expose the dark side of society and human nature. Most of his works deal with evil one way or another.

Works

Twice-Told Tales（重讲一遍的故事 a collection of short stories）

Mosses From an Old Manse （古屋青苔）

The Scarlet Letter （红字）

House of Seven Gables （七个尖角阁的房子）

The Blithdale Romance （福谷传奇）

The Marble Faun （大理石雕像）

Yong Goodman Brown （年轻的小伙子布朗）

The Minister’s Black Veil （教长的黑面纱）

Dr. Rappacini’s Daughter （拉普奇尼博士的女儿）

House: Colonel Pyncheon takes by force the land of Maule and burns him to death. Before he dies, he curses the Colonel, saying, “God will give him blood to drink.” Then his curses really materialize. The young members of the family die out.

To Hawthorne, sin will get punished one way or another. He thought that the decline of his family’s fortune resulted from the sins of

his family. He believed that “the wrong doing of one generation lives into successive ones. Evil will come out evil though it may take many generations to happen.”

The Minister: One day, the much-respected minister suddenly covers his face with a black veil. He refuses to put aside the veil no matter how people persuade him. Even when he is dying, he refuses to do so, saying he will not until his friends show each other their true natures, because when he looks around, everyone’s face is covered with a black veil.

Everyone seems to cover his innermost in the way the minister does. It illustrates to some extent the influence of the puritan doctrine of original sin and total depravity.

Dr: Dr is a devoted scientist. In order to prove a scientific hypothesis－he can remove the “poison” from her daughter, he does not hesitate to sacrifice the happiness of his own daughter in an experiment. He succeeds, but he has to pay dearly: his daughter dies. He is a dedicated scientist at the expense of human lives.

It is about how the scientists’ search for human perfection ironically becomes inhuman, shows his views of what science can do to man and his negative attitude towards science. It reveals a mind that is confused in face of a complete, developing life.

Young Goodman Brown  It is the dream experience of Goodman Brown who is young, innocent and as his name suggests, an average man. Brown is newly married and one night, he leaves his wife “Faith” behind to go on a journey in the forest. The forest, in Howthorne’s tale, is the symbol of sin and evil. There in the forest, he discovers the Puritan community in its entirety, engaged in a collective confession of their association with evil and sin. But the greatest shock is that he finds his “Faith” among them. Just as he calls up his “Faith” to refuse the baptism of evil, he wakes up. Thereafter, wherever he sees his Puritan neighbors, he sees them not as what they claim to be, but as secret and hypocritical sinners.

The Scarlet Letter

An aging scholar, Chillingworth sends his beautiful young wife (being born into a poor country family, marrying the scholar to survive) Hester Prynne（海丝特普琳）to make their new home in New England. Two years later. He comes to New England, he wife has given birth to a baby girl. As a punishment for her sin of adultery, she is made to wear the letter “A” on her dress over her bosom. It is a sign of shame.

  As Prynne refuses to name the father of her child, in order to find who her lover is, her husband disguises himself as a physician, changes his name to Roger Chillingworth. Gradually, he discovers that her lover is the much-admired brilliant young clergyman, Arthur Dimmesdale. Without telling Dimmesdale who he is and what he has found out, he begins to torture him in a cruel way, though there had never been love between he and his wife.

The Clergyman suffered horribly from guilt because he does not confess his sin. The weight of his guity seems to destroy both his body and his spirit. In the end, he dies in the arm of Prynne while confessing his sin at a public gathering. Chillingworth also dies.

Comment

1 .Hawthorn portrays Hester as an aristocratic and sensitive young woman who meets her sentence with dignity and courage. When she is set free, she does not flee the community. She supports herself and her child by doing fancy needlework, devotes her life to her child and helping the sick and the poor, and wins the admiration and love of her fellowmen again. So, The Scarlet Letter is a hymn on the moral growth of the woman. The scarlet letter at first is a token of shame, Adultery, then the genuine sympathy and help she offers to her fellow villagers change it to Able. Later in the end, A appears in the sky, signifying Angel. Her life eventually acquires a real significance when she establishes a meaningful relationship with her fellowmen.

2. Hawthorne maintains that the best policy for man is to be true, honest and ever ready to show one’s worst to the outside world. Hester does it all her life, so she wins a moral victory. Dimmesdale does it finally, so he experiences physical and spiritual torture and dies, dies in his own hands. It is Chillingworth who commits “the unpardonable sin” by keeping suffering Dimmsdale’s conscience until he is tortured to death, so the end of him is also tragic.

It reveals his feminist viewpoint. Hawthorne hopes (in Prynne’s words) that marriage can be based on mutual understanding and love.

Psychological analysis and symbolism are used in the writing.

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Born in New York city. His childhood was happy to the age of 11. In 1930, his father went bankrupt, and then died from hard work and worn-out nerves, leaving heavy debts. He was forced to try all kinds of jobs: banking, farming, teaching. He went to sea at about 20. It enabled him to see life from the bottom, and provided him with abundant material for fiction.

Works:

Early days: Omoo  Mardi  Typee  They are about his adventures among the people of the south pacific islands. Typee made him famous instantly.

Redburn: It is about his voyage and what he saw in the slum of Liverpool.

White Jacket: It is about his life on a United States warship. He cries out against the injustice for seaman.

Late Days: Billy Budd   Bartleby   Benito Cereno They show his disgust with capitalism civilization.

Moby Dick (one of the world’s greatest masterpiece)

Ishmael, the narrator, having little money and finding life on shore grim, went to sea on a whaling ship. The captain is Ahab, a man wit one leg. Moby Dick, the white whale, had broken his leg on a previous voyage, and Ahab resolves to hunt him to the kill. Although they make a good catch of whales, Ahab refuses to turn back until he has killed his enemy. Eventually, the white whale appears and the ship begins to fight with it. Unfortunately, the white whale overturns the ship. All of them get drowned except the narrator

It is a thrilling adventure story, the world’s greatest sea novel. It is regarded as an encyclopedia of whale hunting.

Theme:

1.       One of the major theme is alienation between man and man, man and society, man and nature, which existed in his time. The captain is the best illustration. He cuts himself off from his wife, and stays away most of the time from his crew, and he hates Moby Dick, which is an embodiment of nature.

2.       It makes an attack on New England Transcendentalism, esp, self-reliant, and individualism. Ahab is too self-reliant individual to be a good human being. For him, the only law is his own will. To do what he wants, he can sacrifice lives, defeat nature and deny the humanity and individuality of his fellowmen. He is a victim of Solipsism. His tragedy results from extreme individualism, selfish will.

So Moby Dick reveals the basic pattern of the 19^th C American life—loneliness, suicidal individualism.

What is the significance of the character Ahab in the history of American literature?

 Ahab may have been Melville’s portrait of an Emersonian self-reliant individual. Melville lost no opportunity in his criticism of New England Transcendentalism. Constantly under his attack is its emphasis on Individualism and Oversoul. To say that the whole of Moby Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism is not in fact an exaggeration.

Symbolism: Ahab embodies all of the evil. After the loss of his leg, he feels his pride has been wounded. He gets so angry that he almost losses his sanity and humanity and becomes a devilish creature. He bears no objection, and resolves to take revenge even at the risk of the lives of the crew.

The voyage itself is a metaphor for search and discovery, the search for the ultimate tryth of experience. Eg, Ishmael goes to the sea to find a place where he can live a happy and ideal life. Gradually he comes to see the folly of Ahab seeking to conquer nature, and begins to feel the significance of love and value.

Moby Dick: Various scholars have interpreted it in various ways. To some, it’s a symbol of evil; to others, it is a symbol of goodness; to still others, it’s a symbol of both. It’s whiteness is a paradoxical color too, signifying death and corruption as well as purity, innocence and youth.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Best known American novel. The image of Tom is not one who fights and rebels. Indeed, Uncle Tom, the black man who suffers and endures has become a stereotype of black men’s humiliating passivity. Black writers since Stowe have to struggle with her creations.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Voices of the Night

Hiawatha

Evangeline      

The Courtship of Miles Standish

Famous for his lyrics and ballad. Most of his poems are simple and easily read so that even children can understand them.