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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780451530202
ISBN: 0451530209
Label: Signet Classics
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2006-08-01
Publisher: Signet Classics
Studio: Signet Classics

The master storyteller-in short form

Famous for his novels, Hawthorne was first a short story writer. This collection includes his most powerful and penetrating stories, including "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil."

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: SKIP THE RAILROAD AND GET TO THE REAL STORIES
Review: This is a nice pocket book edition of some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's greatest short stories. It's just the right size to carry around in your back pocket to read whenever you're stuck somewhere waiting for whatever it is.

Hawthorne, with his Puritan ancestry, was obsessed with the idea of sin and what human beings do to conceal them from the community at large. I guess, in a way, he was concerned with hypocrisy. Hawthorne believed in the Biblical saying that noone could cast the first stone against anyone else because we all have our secret sins. You can tell he has disgusted by the Puritan way of life because it allowed no confession and no reconciliation. Everything not up to their moral par, all their desire and passion, was pushed down into their subconscious where they rotted. Like William Blake says, "Desire not acted upon, breeds a pestilance". The very act of suppressing desire makes it stronger.

In the story "The Birthmark" a woman named Georgiana is the most beautiful woman in the world, except for a birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a red hand. Her husband fixates on this harmless mark, believing it to be the symbol of all that is evil in the world. So he tries to destroy it with all his scientific knowledge and destroys her along with it.

In another story called "Egotism" a man is afflicted with a snake growing out of his bosom. It gives him the ability to see everyone's secret sins. "The Minister's Black Veil", one of his most famous, concerns a community's obsession and ultimate horror of their village priest wearing a black veil. Why is he wearing it they ask? What horrible sin could he have committed to feel ashamed to show his face? All it is a thin veil of lace but all their evil comes out in the face of it. Ironically, the people that have awareness of the evil in themselves manifest physical symbols of them which themselves and others can see. Thereby excluding themselves from hypocrisy because their souls are on public display. "Young Goodman Brown" is also included here and is a nightmarish meeting with the Devil.

Some of the more haunting stories that divert away from the Puritan psyche are "Wakefield" in which a husband one day walks out of his house and never goes back home. He lives close by his wife and passes by her in the street for decades but never approaches her. There is no rhyme or reason for doing this. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" the fountain of youth is presented to some elderly guests with surprising results. "The Ambitious Guest" is a cautionary tale about seizing the day. "The Maypole of Merry-Mount" is a surreal tale of circus entertainers coming to found a colony in the new world and their inevitable confrontation with the Puritans.

The only story in this book that I didn't like was "The Celestial Railroad", strangely enough. It's an allegorical odyssey based on John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and if you've never read that work, like me, you will not get anything out of it.

Hawthorne is a master of the short story. His strength is the ability to acknowledge that the evil in ourselves is undeniably existant but that only through admitting that existence can it be combatted. Lots of the characters in this collection destroy their lives with this admission. But at least they are true to themselves. If you enjoy this book, seek out The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, or vice versa.

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