Hawthorne

The oddly named story Egotism or The Bosom Serpent show Hawthorne at both his best and worst. It begins as powerfully as any horror story or story of mental derangement : a young artist returns from Florence to his home town (unnamed but presumably in the us) and finds his old friend completely deranged: he believes a snake lives inside him and is devouring him from within. His steady complaint is "it gnaws me!" He has also become a public nuisance confronting others in town and speaking of his possession or obsession - that's the egotism of the title he thinks only of himself - and seeming to discern that other respectable citizens have snakes inside them - a persistent Hawthorne theme the interior guilt of seemingly upright citizens. Hawthorne does a fantastic job describing the man as reptilian: walking sinuously looking slightly greenish even softly hissing as he speaks. Great start - but then lovecraft meets Disney as Hawthorne has no idea what to do or else is afraid to do what the horrible mode of the story demands and he has the man cured when his long neglected wife speaks to him and he thinks of her rather than only of himself. Think of what Poe or Lovecraft would have done w this material: would he have ended in a madhouse? Would he fully transform into a snake? Would he poison others?

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