Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Style of Moral Narration

A turning point in American literature appeared with the emergence of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s narrative method as a literary phenomenon. American Revolution brought a freedom from Puritan social and religious traditions. Later, American Romanticism, through praising the individuality of the writer, doubled the distance. Hawthorne tried to reflect those social, economical, and political changes he observed during his life span in his works. Interestingly, his stories were good reflections of these religious and political changing concepts. In order to show their structural defects, he attempted to break away from the past dogmatic religious traditions. The method of narration he employed limited the range of meaning and had no reference to the reasons of events. What was in his mind was a different look at the world surrounding him. This article tries to introduce Hawthorne as a writer aware of his contemporary art. Some different parts of his stories will be mentioned which give way to this emphasis that Hawthorne had no objection to different interpretation of his texts; which is symbolically a demonstration of his attempt to get rid of the limits of his society.