House Of The Seven Gables example essay topic

An ancient tale of the dreaded curse. The story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne The House of the Seven Gables is a typical example of this story. The story takes place in a simple time during the Puritan settlement in the New England area. With the Puritans there is the classic case in which a man is accused of witchcraft and is killed. Well this sort of thing occurs in the exact story.

Matthew Maule was accused of being a wizard so he was hanged. When before he was hung he blurted out this words ", God will give him blood to drink. ' (Hawthorne 8) Matthew yelled out this statement while he was pointing at a certain person that person was Colonel Pyncheon. Who after this incident acquired the land that once was Maule's homestead. Near to where the wizard was put to rest was Maule's Well which soon after the incident became hard and brackish. The Colonel soon died in the House of Seven Gables and so the curse began on the family.

That is how the story began and from there the story goes through a series of flashbacks to the past after three generations live in the house. The owners remember the past and what the curse meant and the different connections to the curse and to the inhabitants. The essay that I am using to connect to the story is written by the author Edward Wagenknecht. Edward begins his essay with the different possibilities of the title of the book. He focuses in on Maule's Well and its importance to the story. More than the idea of the house of the seven gables does for the story.

He also compares and contrasts this work with the form work of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Which helped him to gain acclaim for his stories. Then he continues on to speak of what the important chapters or different chapters are. He writes of the eerie incident of chapter 18 and the detail in which Hawthorne goes into to describe the dead body of Judge Pyncheon. Edward also points out the irony in the book when he points out that the judge died in the same chair which his ancestor did.

He mentions how chapter 13 is the most ghostly chapter in the story. How Hawthorne writes about Alice and how she was put in a trance and killed. Wagenknecht continues to write about the connection of what is happening in the life of Hawthorne which helps to understand the development of different characters and the setting and the mood of the story. He writes how Nathaniel may be upset by what the Quakers did in hanging witches and the different occurrences.

He connects the different characters and what there roles were and what different action are supposed to represent. Wagenknecht writes about the connection to the past that the characters have. Like Holgrave is the only last live Maule and how Alice was killed by Matthew Maule and how Phoebe is to marry Holgrave and the circle of the Maule and the Pyncheons comes to an end and Clifford can live in the house with little fear. Then he returns to the important theme and idea of the curse and of what happened in the story. The House of the Seven Gables was a story that was full of mystery and of suspense and longing to find the next twist and turn.

But the main repeated theme throughout the story was of the curse which ruled the lives of the Pyncheons and how the lived in the house and how evil the Judge was in the story. The quote that written by Wagenknecht helps to lay out the theme of the whole story in a few word ", To inherit a great fortune. To inherit a great misfortune. ' (Wagenknecht 108) To gain land by the death of another has a great fault and will eventually bring you down with it.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne the Man, His Tales and Romances. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1989.