The 19th Century Prose of Nathaniel Hawthorne :: Biography Biographies Essays

Nathaniel Hawthornes nineteenth Century Prose Nathaniel Hawthorne, a master of American fiction, often utilizes dreams within the autobiography of his writings to penetrate, explore and express his perceptions of the complex moral and spiritual conflicts that disgust mankind. His clever, yet crucial purpose for u iniquityg dreams is to represent, through symbolism, the human divagation conflict manifested in the souls of man during the firm Christian precepts of the Era in which he lived. As a visionary in an extremely mercenary Puritanical society, he c arefully and successfully manages to depict humanitys pr absolvedsity for sin and secrecy, and any resulting punishment or atonement by weaving dreams into his tales. The dreams he refers to in many of his writings are heavily symbolic out-of-pocket to his Christian foundation, and they imply that he views most dreams as a pigmentation of reality. Hawthornes capacity to express and subsequently bring to fruition th e true state of mans flagitious nature by parallelling dreams with reality represents non only his religious beliefs exclusively in addition his true mastery of observation regarding the human soul. An examination of Hawthornes knowledge narrative in his short story, The Birthmark, published in 1850 during the latter sever of the period of Puritanism expands his observations of mankind with keen insight. Truth often finds its way to the hear close-muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we get along an unconscious self-deception, during our waking moments. (par.15) The prophetic statement was made by Hawthorne to open the readers mind and perhaps inject an introspective glimpse of his perspective that dreams do indeed contain precursors or warnings of future conscious realities. He also contends that people often purposely disregard the contents of their dreams and do not face the realities t hat they are confronted with while in unconscious moments of slumber. Hawthornes writings are marked by intrinsic depth and a sincere bank to crawl inside of the characters he has created. He accomplishes this objective by allowing them to dream. He makes his presence known by frequently commenting openly throughout his prose and lay in a narrative of his assertions. Hawthorne historically has his characters confront reality following a dream, or he reveals that