On the symbolic significance of Hawthorne's novels in British and American literature

Nathaniel middot nathaniel hawthorne (1804- 1864) is an outstanding representative of American romantic writers in the late19th century and one of the founders of American literature. If Hawthorne's novels are divided from the perspective of time, his novels can be roughly divided into the early Legend of New England, the middle Fable of the Mind and the later novels. Young Goodman &; Middot's Brown is one of the short stories that belong to the "fable of the heart" in the middle period. Alleged fable is a literary style that uses false stories to illustrate a certain truth and achieve the purpose of exhortation, education or satire. Its characteristic is to express a certain point of view with objective scenery, making it a tool to convey ideas. Therefore, in the literary style of fable, there will be a lot of symbolic means to express some abstract concepts, thoughts and emotions with the help of the specific image of something. Hawthorne's novel The Fable of the Heart is a typical example of Hawthorne's use of a large number of symbolic means to attack the evil of human nature and the hypocrisy of religion.

The novel Young Goodman &; Middot Brown tells the story of a young man, Goodman, who lived in Salem at the end of 17 when witchcraft was prevalent. Middot Brown's story. In the novel, despite the opposition of his new wife, Brown insisted on attending the devil's date and witnessed the ugliness of human nature with his own eyes. The novel adopts surrealism, fictionalizes people or scenes with profound meanings, such as the devil, the hallucinatory forest and the dream of waking up suddenly, and uses various symbolic techniques to make the novel full of a strong sense of fable.

First, the symbolic meaning of characters.

In young Goodman &; Middot In Brown, Hawthorne divides the characters in the novel into two categories, namely, the good guys in life and the bad guys in life. Obviously, the young Browns are typical good people, because Goodman means "good people" in English, while Brown's wife Faith's name means "loyalty" and "faith" in English. Brown is obviously convinced of his wife's loyalty, so the novel says, "The name is just right for her." It is because of the existence of Faith, a loyal and beautiful wife, that the determination of good young Brown to date the devil is shaken. He hesitated, and his inner struggle between good and evil was fierce: "Heaven is above, faith is below, I am still fighting the devil, I am firm!" " However, the final result is disappointing. Although walking in the forest, Brown kept going, especially when he heard Faith crying in the forest and confirmed that his most loyal wife Faith had also come to the devil's date. His last insistence on the light was shattered, and he began to feel desperate and shouted: "There is no goodness in the world! Sin is just an empty name! Come on, devil, because the world is yours! " "He smiled and smiled for a long time. Then he grabbed a crutch and walked forward. Shunzhong Haoer strode like a meteor, not like walking, but like flying. & amphellip& amphellip, by virtue of mortal evil instinct, he still rushed forward. "

The sudden collapse of Brown's moral sense shows the psychological characteristics of American immigrants in the17th century. Brown belongs to the third generation of Puritans. He was originally the most devout and holy Protestant. /kloc-More than 0/00 years ago, Brown's ancestors came to North America with pure ideals, determined to build the North American wilderness into their ideal pure paradise on earth through their hard work and creation, and left a moral model for future generations. As a descendant of these pioneers, young Brown yearns for purity and kindness and pursues moral perfection. He has enough confidence in the purity and kindness of human nature, bright hope for life and deep love for his wife. At the same time, however, the original sin theory of _ _ and the inner depravity theory of human beings make people who deeply believe in Calvinism doubt the moral integrity of human beings, and they are more likely to see the dark, incomplete, stupid and sinful side that exists in social groups, thus more firmly believing in the credibility of the original sin theory.

These two images of good people (Brown and Fez) in Hawthorne's works represent the model of pure human beings. When their faith collapsed and their pure personality was destroyed, their symbolic significance was very profound. From 65438 to 1930s, a profound ideological emancipation movement took place in the United States. The representatives of this movement are Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller, and their representative thought is Transcendentalism. The transcendental theory in Emerson's On Nature and American Philosopher directly opposes the orthodox thought of Calvinism. He advocates that human beings should return to nature, emphasize the independence of personality, look at nature from the perspective of "beauty", get the highest spiritual experience from nature, and integrate soul and nature into the universe. Transcendentalists say that "nature" includes material nature and spiritual nature. Humans should purify their souls by experiencing "nature" and being in it, instead of distorting and obliterating human nature by relying on abstract theories that suppress human nature. This transcendentalism deeply influenced Hawthorne. Hawthorne showed his understanding of transcendentalism in his novels. He tried to show the naturalness and versatility of human nature by exposing the inner spirit of human beings, thus exposing the hypocrisy of religion. In this regard, the famous American novelist Herman &; Middot Melville commented: "His greatest achievement lies in his good description of darkness, and in his description of darkness in the depths of human hearts."

In young Goodman &; Middot In Brown, it's not just the Browns who are keen on going out with the devil, but a large group of people. Most of them are very respected people in real life, some are "very devout wives" and some are "people who will appear in the state legislature the next day." These modest gentlemen or ladies in the eyes of the general public appear in this ambiguous place, and some of them are "self-indulgent men". They are "famous" because they are Puritans whose thoughts are strictly controlled, pious people who preach to the public on the Sabbath, and pure people who pursue nothing but want to convert to religion in the eyes of the general public (including Brown). But now they are mixed with the devil, which shows how profound evil is hidden in people's hearts. The appearance of this crowd exposed the hypocrisy of religion and highlighted the most basic theme in Hawthorne's novels, "the evil of human nature". As the British writer Lawrence commented, "Hawthorne is a lovely young man with blue eyes. He knows all the evils in the depths of human hearts and exposes them in clever disguise. "

Second, the symbolic significance of the forest and the snake stick

Young Goodman &; The whole story scene of middot's Brown is set in the forest, and it is the forest in the middle of the night, which is another major feature of the fable. In many ancient fables, the place where the story takes place is the forest. For example, many stories in Aesop's fables and krylov's fables are set in forests. Therefore, "forest" has become a common scene and symbol in fables. In the fable, the forest is no longer a lovely place with dense vegetation, but a place full of darkness, danger, psychedelic and ghosts. Middot's fabled novel Brown takes the forest as the scene, which makes the good boy Brown's date with the devil full of mystery and danger. Sure enough, since the good boy Brown entered the forest, the forest began to show its danger, and the forest has always restricted Brown's actions. At first, Brown "set foot on a lonely path, full of gloomy trees, crowded and squeezed, and barely let the narrow path meander through." Just after the people passed, the branches and leaves closed the path and it was desolate. " This symbolizes that Brown is heading for a dark place, and it also shows that Brown is heading for a road of no return. The forest under the cover of night gives people a deeper sense of guilt, and pure brown will also go to the opposite of morality under this evil squeeze. When Dan Blanc saw that his pure wife was also tempted by the devil, he felt that the pure world had been subverted, and strange changes had taken place in the forest around him: "The trees creaked, the beasts howled, and the Indians screamed." When Dan Blanc understood how powerful evil and power were, the forest, a place where the devil was hidden, also revealed its true colors, showing all the evil, and Jeanblanc became even crazier and more irrational. With the wind in the forest, the hymn Brown heard changed: "It's not like human voice, but more like the roar of everything in the dark wilderness, which is terrible." Here, the forest has completely turned into a sinful world, just as the black figure (the incarnation of the devil) in the novel said: "The whole earth is a sinful stain, a huge blood stain, far more than that."

In addition, an important prop appeared in the novel: a curved snake stick. This snake stick is in the hands of Brown's colleague. He is actually the devil's guide and the instigator of all evil. At every critical moment, the snake stick can lure and support people who go on a date with the devil to move forward and let them enter the abyss of sin. The author has written about this snake stick many times in the novel, and repeatedly stressed that it is "the most striking thing": "A stick shaped like a black snake, carefully carved, vividly captures a lively snake." ; "He threw his cane at her feet. When he came to her, it might suddenly become a living thing because its owner lent it to an Egyptian magician." The prototype of this snake-shaped walking stick obviously comes from the snake that lured Adam and Eve to commit the original sin in the Garden of Eden. The moral of the snake-shaped walking stick is to lead people to commit crimes and attract them to commit crimes, just as Hawthorne wrote in Egocentrism. Or the snake in my heart:

"So he made his real snake &; Mdash& ampmdash If he really has a snake in his heart &; Mdash& ampmdash; It has become a sign of everyone's fatal mistake or hidden sin or uneasy conscience. It has plunged its teeth into the most painful place without regret. "

Third, the symbolic meaning of dreams.

At the end of the novel, Hawthorne sets up a suspense: he wakes Brown, a good boy, suddenly at the moment when the devil's baptism ceremony is about to take place, as if waking up from a nightmare: "The evil incarnation is here (referring to a natural pit full of blood) to soak his hand, ready to leave a baptism mark on their foreheads, so that they can share the secret of evil & hellip & hellip & lsquo, faith,&; Rsquo's husband shouted. Lsquo, look up to heaven and fight evil! & amprsquo As soon as I opened my mouth, I found myself alone in the quiet night, listening to the wind through the forest and disappearing silently. " It was in this call to God that the arrogant devil suddenly disappeared, the forest became calm and everyone retreated. So what Brown just experienced was really a dream? Hawthorne didn't tell readers clearly in his novels, which became another symbolic meaning he left behind. Readers can look for answers from Hawthorne's life experience.

Hawthorne was born into a real Puritan family. The first generation of Hawthorne's ancestors were colonial judges, who were notorious for cruelly persecuting Quakers in New England in17th century, while the second generation was severely cursed for Salem's "witch-driving case" in 1692, which left an indelible shadow on Hawthorne's sensitive mind. The guilt caused by the crimes committed by his ancestors is so deep in his heart that he often suspects that the decline of his family and the early death of his father are related to this. To this end, he changed his surname to show the difference between himself and his family ancestors. All these have caused Hawthorne's unique psychology in his creation: he believes in the theory of original sin and refuses to accept it completely; I believe in the saying that "the sins of one generation will be passed on to future generations", but I don't want to obey this fateful arrangement. Therefore, on the one hand, Hawthorne thinks that human beings have evil nature, on the other hand, he tries to gain spiritual salvation through moral power, thus gaining new life. So in young Goodman &; Middot In Brown, Hawthorne doesn't want the good boy Brown to really fall into the devil's hands, so at the end of the novel, an unresolved ending is arranged, so that the moral force can play a role at a critical moment and awaken people who are addicted to evil, which also shows Hawthorne's religious view: "Once the inner world is purified, many evils wandering in the outer world will disappear on their own." At the same time, it also shows that although people have evil thoughts in their hearts, they also have the power to do good. If a person can stick to the noble feelings in his heart, the terrible devil will automatically retreat.

In young Goodman &; Middot has many symbolic techniques in Brown, such as Faith's pink ribbon, strange hymns in the dark, lighted pine trees and an altar formed by a boulder in the forest, all of which have profound meanings of good, evil, beauty and ugliness. It is in this series of symbolic techniques that Hawthorne's novels have more profound themes, fuller characters, more vivid allegorical features, and the ingenious integration of religious thoughts and novel techniques, which explains Hawthorne's moral concept well. As Li Yanqiao commented in The Original Sin of Modern Western Literature:

"Literature and religion are worlds apart, but at least one thing is the same. They all try to judge the phenomena and human nature in life, but their methods and conclusions are completely different. The people and society represented by western modern literature are closer to the description of people and society to some extent. Modern writers attribute the disadvantages of society to human nature and hope to purify human nature in some way, so as to get modern people out of the predicament. "