Hawthorne and the Scarlet Letter Essay

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Joshua Benlevy
Ms. Benton
AP English Language
5/21/13
Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter Many author’s works reflect their life. They reflect all their happiness and pain, their joy and sorrow into their books. This makes their novel disguised autobiographies. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter reflects much of his own life and what happened to him as a child. Hawthorne’s life was not an easy one. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s father died when he was a child of yellow fever. His widowed mother became a recluse, hiding in her house, refusing to meet people. After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine, he spent twelve years of his life refining and hammering out his writing skills. He met many people who would become prominent in later years. He first published his first book in 1837 and married in 1842, settling in Concord, Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s grandfather was a judge in the Salem Witch Trials, which took place in Massachusetts. During his life, Hawthorne worked as a custom’s surveyor. Despite his renown as an author, Hawthorne died poor, sick, and unable to write. It was not until after his death that The Scarlet Letter because famous and popular. He died in 1864 while visiting former U.S. president and good fried Franklin Pierce. Much of what happened in The Scarlet Letter was reflected in his own life. The narrator of The Scarlet Letter was also a customs officer, just like Hawthorne himself. His father is compared to Roger Chillingworth, who was lost at sea and deemed dead. When he later shows up alive, this may be because when Hawthorne’s father died, he was still a child and had not accepted the fact that his father was dead. He harbored hopes that his father was still alive and well. On this note, Pearl’s father, Arthur Dimmesdale died when she was still young. This may be
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