How Did Nathaniel Hawthorne Affect Popular Culture

“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the most important members of American Literature in the early to mid nineteenth century. Many of Hawthorne's works revolved around themes of sin, guilt, perseverance, and forgiveness. These values are rooted in Hawthorne's family, as his ancestors are puritans who played an important part in the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne's use of puritan values helped to develop the characters in his works in intricate ways. As an American author, Hawthorne has affected popular culture in many ways. One of the main reasons for this is the popularity of perhaps

His heritage would play an important part in the development of his writing and imagination. “The Hawthornes had been involved in religious persecution with their first American forebear William, and John Hawthorne was one of the three judges at the seventeenth-century Salem witchcraft trials (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1998).” “Hawthorne feared that his family suffered from a curse brought on by John and William’s persecution of quakers and alleged witches, although the hawthorne family was once wealthy and prosperous, the future generations slowly lost the family’s fortune and land until little was left (Brooks, 2011).” Nathaniel grew up in both Salem and Maine living a life of isolation as, “A leg injury immobilized the boy for a considerable period, during which he developed an exceptional taste for reading and contemplation (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1998).” This time of his life is undoubtedly what most influenced him to become the grand writer that he is considered today. Sadly, “Nathaniel’s father, a sea captain, died in 1808, leaving his wife and three children dependant of relatives (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1998).” His mother was never very present in Nathaniel's life, and it only got worse after his father's death. Luckily, “With the aid of his prosperous maternal uncles, the Mannings, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin college from 1821 to 1825

A born writer, like Edgar Allan Poe he suffered the difficulties of the writer in early-19th-century America: an unsympathetic environment, the materialism of a physically expanding nation, the lack of an artistic tradition. His Puritan heritage was both a support and a drawback. Its tradition of soul-searching encouraged profundity, and its penchant for seeking God's Providence in natural events provided Hawthorne with a way of seeing and interpreting. It was a highly literate tradition as well. It was, however, notoriously unfriendly to art--fiction as make-believe was mere vanity, and as imitation of God's creatures and creations it was idolatry. A natural artist, Hawthorne was always to worry about the morality of imitating and analyzing human nature in his art of fiction. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1998)”

Many of Hawthorne's works circled around the confrontation of good and evil, and most of them at least had something to do with good and evil. Hawthorne wrote many short stories and novels throughout his career, some of which are still read in schools and around the globe today. One of these novels is The Scarlet