Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales

7/10

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago at long last. I read several of the stories back in 2009. Finished the rest of the stories and most of the critical essays in 2010. I seriously only had like 40 pages left because I got so burned out on the essays. The essays are so smartsy-fartsy and just very boring to read, for me.

But the Tales, for the most part, are enjoyable and well done (obviously, since it's Hawthorne we're talking about here). I will now commence with listing some of my fav's:

-Roger Malvin's Burial: Two guys are struggling through a forest after having survived a bloody battle with some Indians, but the men are wounded. Roger Malvin can go no further and convinces Reuben to go on and not bury him so that Reuben can make it back alive (if he would have stayed and buried him then he would not have had the strength to make it the rest of the way home). But Reuben commits to return and bury him once he regains enough strength. He goes home, marries Malvin's daughter, life goes on and he just never gets around to it. He feels extreme guilt and never tells anybody and people consider him a hero, making it all the worse, guilt-wise, for Reuben. Later, Reuben and his wife and son go to find a new place to live and journey through the forest. Reuben and his son are hunting for food, Reuben hears a noise, turns and fires and shoots and kills his own son. He then realizes that it is the very place where he left Roger Malvin many years ago. Epic.

-Wakefield: Just a cool little story about this guy who one morning walks out of the house and leaves his wife behind and lives in a house across the street, unbeknownst to his wife, for 20 years. He doesn't really have a reason why either. Pretty interesting.

-The Minister's Black Veil: A minister randomly starts wearing a black veil over his face and doesn't say why. People react differently to this but mostly everyone judges him negatively for it. Although he does gain a following from those who have lived sinful lives and feel like this minister knows them and how to help them. He keeps wearing it all the way until he dies. It is a cool story. I actually read this one out loud to Matt as we drove to Zion's to go canyoneering. I also wrote a paper on this story in college and got an "A" on the paper. Boo-yah!

-The Birthmark: This guy is married to this beautiful woman who is considered perfectly flawless except for this little birthmark that she has on her face. Her husband becomes obsessed with the birthmark and focuses on it so much and determines to figure out a way to get rid of it. He works endlessly in his lab and finally comes up with this medicine that he believes will get rid of the birthmark. His poor wife just wants him to accept her and feels like she has to drink the medicine that he gives her. She drinks it and dies. The dude should have appreciated what he had, duh.

I am a Hawthorne fan. He has a unique writing style that, I think, can turn some people off. But you just got to stick with it and he writes some cool stories with some cool underlying themes.

A quote from 'The Birthmark':

"Yet, had Aylmer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present."