The 200 Year Old Man - 1167 Words

The 200-Year-Old Man: How Nathaniel Hawthorne Maintained a 17th Century Puritan Allegory Nathaniel Hawthorne, born â€Å"Nathaniel Hathorne† until he added a â€Å"w† to his birth name years later, was a prominent American Novelist that lived during the 19th century. Hawthorne was considered a dark romantic, and often â€Å"undertook the mission of exploring the darker side of humanity† in his short stories and novels. (Wright 3) Hawthorne descended from an ancestry tracing back many generations full of devout Puritans. Puritans maintained a unique perception of the natural world; â€Å"His forefathers’ concept of wilderness was an important part of their religious life, and in many of Hawthorne’s tales, nature can be perceived as an active agent for both†¦show more content†¦An elder, gravely-injured man named Roger Malvin, and his younger, less severely injured counterpart Reuben Bourne, are halted on their retreat as Malvin is too weak to continue towards civilization. Bourne is forced to desert Malvin, abandoning him below a â€Å"mass of granite, rearing its smooth, flat surface, fifteen or twenty feet above their heads†¦a gigantic grave-stone, upon which the veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters.†(Hawthorne) The large stone over the two men â€Å"has often been assumed to represent the stone tablets of the Old Testament.† (Wright 201). Nearing the conclusion of the story, the now husband of Malvin’s daughter Dorcas and father of one, Bourne sets out on a hunting trip with his son Cyrus. Bourne, following a rustling of leaves in a nearby thicket, blindly fires his rifle into the brush in hopes of killing a deer. Dorcas hurries eagerly towards the sound of the gunshot in hopes of finding Cyrus has downed his first deer, but instead stumbles upon her husband standing over the lifeless corpse of her son. The thicket is a symbol of deception, introduced by the devil to trick Bourne. In April of 1835, three years following the publishing of â€Å"Roger Malvin’s Burial,† Hawthorne publishes â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† another piece that bursts at the seams with symbols of Puritan culture. The story follows a young man named Goodman Brown, who is journeying into the forest late one evening. Upon leaving his wife,Show MoreRelatedAggressive Driving Essay 21096 Words   |  5 Pagesaggressive driving though. In Atlanta, Georgia a two year old toddler was shot through the neck by an irate motorist engaged in an argument over a road incident with the toddler’s father (The Atlantic Journal amp; Constitution, 30 June 2000). In Denver, Colorado a 51 year-old man used a .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol to kill a 32 year-old bicyclist who cut him off on the road (The Denver Post, 21 June 2000). In Florida, a 41 year-old man who pulled into an exact change lane at a toll boothRead MoreKongen1061 Words   |  5 Pages Happy Birthday, 1951 is a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. 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