This was a paper I wrote for one of my classes. I reference the class in the work. The assignment was to write about our experience reading Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I fell in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne the first time I read him. I somehow managed to get through high school without ever reading him. It wasn’t until my third year of college that I ever picked him up.
It was American Literature I taught by Dr. Jim Aton. He was a brilliant man, the kind who are so intriguing to talk to outside of class but was a really lousy professor. We had spent the first few weeks of the semester reading journals/autobiographies of the first people in America. It was painfully boring and Dr. Aton’s bland, monotone lectures didn’t help the situation. I was dying in that class.
When we finally got to Nathaniel Hawthorne, we were assigned to read The Scarlet Letter. I had my doubts about the novel. My mom had always expressed her passionate distaste for the novel. My mom is an incredibly smart woman who graduated top of her class in high school and had a 4.0 her first two years of college. Her hatred of The Scarlet Letter was not something I could brush off lightly.
But Hawthorne didn’t have that effect on me. Actually, it had quite the opposite. The Scarlet Letter pulled me into itself in way that few other books have. I have always enjoyed reading and grew up reading anything I could get my hands on. But I can only say I’ve felt a connection with a book on a level that almost is akin to something spiritual only three or four times. Earlier that year when I was living in St. Petersburg, Russia I had felt it when I read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Another time in my life nearly five years before, it was Anthem by Ayn Rand. I remember hearing a quote from one of my teachers in high school by Christopher Morley, “There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.” That’s how it felt to read The Scarlet Letter and those other few books. It was like falling in love.
I felt emotionally connected and invest to Hester Prynne, even if I didn’t understand why. She confused me often by her feelings towards her Letter. She felt shame from it, yet there was always this independent defiant spirit within her. Her stubborn commitment to keeping the identity of her lover, her fellow “sinner,” a secret was inspiring and yet I questioned whether I could be so loyal under the same circumstances. Of course, I’d like to think I could but I wonder.
The theme of guilt and shame in both public and private settings was so rich and lush. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale were guilty of the same “sin” but Hester must suffer publicly while Arthur does is private. His private guilt tortures him and eventually destroys him. In addition, Roger Chillingworth still remains to this day one of the most evil characters I have ever read. The man perpetuates a poor man’s suffering and self-torture just out of sheer malice and meanness and the subtle ways he goes about it made my skin crawl.
I haven’t read anything by Hawthorne since that American Literature class two years ago. Having the chance to read a few of Hawthorne’s shorter works was an opportunity I was looking forward to the most in this class. It was like seeing an old lover after many years. You notice things that are different about them but they still have that underlying feeling you fell in love with the first time. It’s comfortable. I was falling in love once again with Hawthorne’s complexity of characters and emotions. I knew I must have become more cynical in the two year absence because I always expected the worst thing to happen to the characters in the short stories. More often than not, these things never happened but I still enjoyed reading Hawthorne again. I would find myself staying up late, reading more than what was assigned. I had felt that same feeling when I began to first date someone. Sleep seemed less important than just being together. Reading his short stories rekindled my love of Hawthorne, though it wasn’t ever gone.It never left me. It was just hidden, waiting for me to find it again.
Love you.
Mean it.
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