7 Gables Book Report
The story springs from the actions of Colonel Pyncheon, whose mysterious death seems to have been a direct result of his prior evil conduct. He built The House of the Seven Gables on a plot of land that he had wrongly taken from Matthew Maule in Salem, Massachusetts. Maule, who, was hung during the Salem witch hunts in 1692 for allegedly practicing witchcraft, suspected Colonel Pyncheon of encouraging the persecution so that he could take his property. Colonel Pyncheon's evil scheming would be the root of the curse that would loom with the Pyncheon family. Hepzibah Pyncheon, an aging spinster, inherits the house that Colonel Pyncheon had built and opens a small cent shop in the face of growing impoverishment. The house has lost all its former grandeur and presents a dismal appearance. Hepzibah allows the bright-spirited17-year-old Phoebe Pyncheon to come live in the house along with an artist, Holgrave, who occupies one of the gables and is a descendant of Matthew Maule, the old enemy of the Pyncheons. Holgrave is an artist, and he and Phoebe fall in love. Phoebe "is like a ray of sunshine flooding a dark corner." She signifies the future hope of the Pyncheon family and eventually marries Holgrave. The se
People were optimistic about the capability of human nature to lead us in the right direction. At the time, the mood in America was generally liberal and optimistic. Hawthorne, however, was preoccupied with the past. Instead of believing that man was perfectible, he felt that evil would exist as long as the human heart existed. And so it was difficult for him to share in the expectations of a "new" world when what he saw was the past visiting its sins upon the present. Hawthorne may have been trying to rid his family of its shame from a relatives involvement in the Salem Witch Trials, but his novel did, in fact, shed some light on a period of time that had remained a scar on the developing skin of a youthful America and on the social thinking that had permeated into it. Hawthorne's novel, The House of the Seven Gables, has had great significance in the world of historical literature since it was published. Hawthorne is seen today as a writer of great influence on subsequent generations of storytellers. The effect of Hawthorne's creation of isolated and withdrawn characters, and his probing of the psychology that led to their alienation, may now be seen in the novels of such various writers as Henry James, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, and Robert Penn Warren. Hawthorne also brings light to the Salem Witch Trials that took pl
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 902
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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