Hawthorne

In his story The Ambitious Guest Hawthorne again establishes a very powerful mood and sense of place by writing about a time and place that was both familiar to him as a landscape but removed from him in time and sensibility: in this case a small family house in the gap or notch beside mount washington and in what appears to be the late 1700s or about 50 years before Hawthorne's time. He describes a small and comfortable family setting almost a parody of the "happy" family and of American virtues - self reliant resilient open hearted. The family keeps a kind of informal in taking in the occasional traveler passing thru the notch and bringing the traveler right up to the family hearth. The essence of the story is that this household is a small place of comfort and protection against the treacherous conditions outside and on the mount is crest. The traveler of the title is a young man they take in who says he is driven to become famous even posthumously tho he concedes he has accomplished nothing yet and doesn't even say what he is pursuing. This conversation leads others in the fam to speak of their secret goals and ambitions. Then - devastation: a rockslide and they rush out of the house to shelter as house is spared and they all vanish bodies never recovered. So there is on one hand the tendentious moral element: be thankful for what you have and don't be seduced by pride and ambition. The Spiritual or religious element we all on this earth will vanish without a trace. The ironic - the traveler is famous in a way tho still unknown and unnamed. And the narrative or legendary element: the strangeness of the encounter. The hints of sexual yearlings unfulfilled (the daughter esp), the the contrast between grandmother thinking of death and the children wanting to go on an outing during the storm and finally the passing stage coach that they let dont take in - distant singing and carousing voices during the night.

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