Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on Independence Day, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of a sea captain whose father was also a sea captain. Hawthorne's ancestors had been in Salem for a good part of two hundred years. Consider The Scarlet Letter as a romance. Hester's adultery, based on love and passion, may be called romantic. The philosophic attitude implicit in his writing is generally pessimistic, growing out of the Puritan background, although his use of the supernatural has an aesthetic rather than a religious foundation, for he presented New England's early Puritanism and its decay in terms of romantic fiction.
Emphasis on allegory and symbolism causes his characters to be recalled as the embodiment of psychological traits or moral concepts more than as living figures. The main themes of hypocrisy and revenge are serious topics. The interior of the human heart is probed. Conscience and remorse are serious matters for speculation. The setting (17th century Boston and the scaffold) is quite unrelated to the experience of readers. The characters are a mixture, from the world of the living (such as Governor Bellingham and Reverend John Wilson) and from the author's imagination (such as the four major actors in his drama: Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and little Pearl). The management of the "atmospherical medium" (chiaroscuro) is very effective. The first scaffold scene takes place in the intense daylight of noon. (Hester is clearly seen by all.) The second scaffold scene takes place in the dark of night. (Dimmesdale holding Hester and Pearl's hands is not visible to people at night.) (Lawrence, D. H. ) The third scaffold scene occurs in the daytime, where all can clearly see the minister on the scaffold. (Dimmesdale confesses in the clear light of day, hiding nothing.) Notice the moral implication involved in light and darkness - the light of day reveals evil; the darkness hides wickedness and cowardice. Another aspect of chiaroscuro is the use of sunlight.
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