An Explorer Of The Interior Of Human Heart-On Hawthorne's Thematic Concern Of Sin And Salvation

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was a representative romantic writer in the 19th century American literature, who was praised as "the first great novelist of American nation." His works include five completed novels like The Scarlet Letter and more than one hundred short stories such as The Minister's Black Veil and Young Goodman Brown. He exquisitely displayed his idea about human nature. This thesis mainly discusses the manifestation, reason, function and influence of Hawthorn's idea about evil.First, the Calvinist Puritanism had been deeply engraved in his ideology through his living condition and experience. So, he firmly believed the so-called "Original Sin" was the source of evil, which would breed all kinds of crimes in the human lives. The sin of intellect was the most vicious one for its prototype was the "Original Sin". The essence of all the sin and suffering was the egoism that caused the "Original Sin".Second, there was deep contradiction in Hawthorn's idea about the evil of human nature. Although he held the Puritanical viewpoint of life and behavior standard, he seriously criticized it. He hesitated between the sentiment and reason. He detested the evil but he affirmed its function of education. He sympathized with the evil of human nature and he was a friend of the sinner. The essence of the contradiction was the confliction between the Calvinist Puritanism and humanism which were two pillars of Hawthorn's idea about evil. Because this idea was the core of Hawthorn's world outlook, its contradiction was the basic element forming the writer's world outlook. From the point of the Character Psychology, the weakened patriarchy and the anima persona were the main reason of the complexity and contradiction of the writer's ideology.Third, being a Christian humanist, while Hawthorn described and thought about the evil of human nature, he believed that the key of preventing the demoralization and social problem was purifying people's soul. In Hawthorne's opinion, there were basically three ways including confession and atonement, benevolence and sympathy, and return to nature, for people to purify souls, all of which bore obvious humanistic characteristics.