Nathaniel Hawthorne's Deaths And Dark Backgrounds

Deaths and dark backgrounds have a very strong effect on people, and some people can use this as a push forward to their ultimate goal in life. In 18th century Massachusetts Nathaniel Hawthorne experienced both of these realities at a very early age; the death of a family member and his dark family past haunted him for the rest of his life. With such a harsh youth Hawthone learned to channel the immense pain that he was going through into many of his unique works. Furthermore, Hawthorne’s experiences with trauma, religion, and his family and friends that he was influenced by had a strong presence and emotion in his writing that many other authors are missing in their own writings. Due to Hawthorne’s experiences in life with friends, family,

Hawthorne had a very tough childhood as mentioned by author Sarah Bird Wright, “Hawthorne's father, Nathaniel Hathorne, was a shipmaster. He died in 1808, at the age of 28, when his son was only 4 on a voyage to Dutch Guiana” (Wright). Losing his father at such a young age greatly affected Nathaniel and his family with them going in and out of homes. Because of this many of Hawthorne’s characters are written without father figures leading them to have family issues just as Hawthorne did growing up. Many of his experiences without a father are shown through his characters. For example, in one of Hawthorne’s famous books, “Young Goodman Brown” the main character’s father has already passed away before the story started leading to problems later on in his life (Werlock). This shows how in many of Hawthorne’s writings he included a little of himself in each and showed his experiences through writing. Not soon after growing up Hawthorne was almost always in poverty after his father's death which explains why many of his works have characters in poverty (Werlock). Many of his famous works like The House of Seven Gables reference poverty in which it contrasts the rich and the poor many times throughout the book. This is similar to his life where Hawthorne started in poverty but later in life became rich. Another example of poverty is in Young Goodman Brown where

For example, “Hawthorne's best-known works The Scarlet Letter and “Young Goodman Brown,” are set in puritan New England and grapple with explicitly Puritan themes” (Sterling). Hawthorne is most well known for bringing his Puritan background into his writings whether it be beliefs that some characters have or actions that the Puritans may have also made. In the Scarlet Letter, the Puritans were characterized as shallow and hypocritical. This shows both the hate Hawthorne has toward Puritan life and the fact that it is still a part of him. Furthermore, Hawthorne used his New England region as a background and examined such seminal influences as puritanism and the concomitant concepts of guilt, redemption, good and evil, sexuality, morality, perfection, and pride (Werlock). Hawthorne used New England in many of his books because of the fact it was a highly Puritan-dominant area. Hawthorne also used many of the themes of Puritan New England as the main themes of his books like guilt and