In this Literary Analysis I will discuss the effects that the death of Matthew Maule had on the Pyncheon family, and whether the curse is real. I will also go over the theme and moral of the story and how it ties into Matthew Maule’s curse. One can imagine it, the gloomy, dark day, the wailing of his wife and children, and the judge declaring that he must die; as the executioner pulls the lever and the floor drops, the man falls and the rope catches his neck. Because the rope does not break his neck, he starts to strangle to death. As he gasps for breath, he gets out his last words,“ God will give him blood to drink,” then he slowly dies. The judge then used his last words to confirm that he was, in fact, a witch.
This is what it must have been like for Matthew Maule on the day of his death. Even though it is a story, Nathaniel Hawthorne presents Maule’s death so well that the reader may feel as if he is at the hanging with Maule’s wife and children. As one reads the book, it might tempt them to believe that there was a curse and that it did affect the cursed family. But why did Matthew Maule curse the family and more importantly, who is the cursed family, and did the curse
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The moral of this book also happens to be the theme of the story; the sins of the father are visited on the son. Even though Hawthorne was not part of a religious sect, he would have known and studied Puritan beliefs and the Bible, and in Exodus 34:6-7 is says, “The Lord… visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” So there is a correlation between Colonel Pyncheon’s greed and the supposed curse on the Pyncheon name, it is just not a real