ENG 1015, Sec.
331
March 19, 1997
Nathaniel Hawthorne, a master of American
fiction, often utilizes dreams within the annals of
his writings to
penetrate, explore and express his perceptions of the complex moral and spiritual conflicts
that plague mankind. His clever, yet
crucial purpose for using dreams is to represent, through symbolism, the human
divergence conflict manifested in the souls of man during the firm Christian
precepts of the Era in which he lived.
As a visionary in an extremely conservative Puritanical society, he
carefully and successfully manages to depict humanity's propensity for sin and secrecy,
and any resulting punishment or atonement by weaving
dreams into his
tales. The dreams he refers to in many
of his writings are heavily symbolic due to his Christian foundation, and they
imply that he views most dreams as a pigmentation of reality. Hawthorne's ability to express and subsequently
bring to fruition the true state of man's sinful nature by parallelling dreams
with reality represents not only his religious beliefs but also his true
mastery of observation regarding the human soul.
An examination of Hawthorne's own narrative
in his short story, The Birthmark, published in 1850 during the latter part of
the period of Puritanism expands his observations of mankind with keen insight.
Truth often finds its way to the
mind close-muffled
in robes of sleep, and then speaks
with uncompromising
directness of matters in regard to
which we practice
an unconscious self-deception,
during our waking
moments. (par.15)
The prophetic
statement was made by Hawthorne to open the reader's mind and perhaps inject an
introspective glimpse of his perspective
that dreams do indeed contain precursors or warnings of future conscious
realities. He also contends that people
often purposely disregard the contents of their dreams and do not face the
realities that they are confronted with while in unconscious moments of
slumber. Hawthorne's writings are
marked by intrinsic depth and a sincere desire to crawl inside of the
characters he has created. He
accomplishes this objective by allowing them to dream. He makes his presence known by frequently
commenting openly throughout his prose and interject a narrative of his
assertions. Hawthorne historically has
his characters confront reality following a dream, or he reveals that the whole
ordeal that his characters have faced are, in fact, dreams. Hawthorne nudges the reader to conclude that
dreams can sometimes solve conflicts that are many times categorically denied
while one is awake. Hawthorne expresses
the fact that dreams are possibly warnings and that often mankind does not heed
them. His profound statement about
dreams suggests that by paying attention to the sleeping imagination, a
person might reconcile adverse moral
behavior and establish more balance and clarity of reality while they are
awake.
The Bible was a direct source of
reference for Hawthorne. He grew up
reading and studying religious concepts.
In the Book of Job, Elihu's speech to Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar expresses
Hawthorne's belief in God's "answer" to mankind's sinfulness.
For God speaks again and again, in
dreams, in visions of the
night when deep sleep falls on men
as they lie on their beds. He
opens their ears in times like
that, and gives them wisdom and
instruction, causing them to change
their minds, and keeping
them from pride, and warning them
of the penalties of sin, and
keeping them from falling into some
trap. (Book of Job 33:14-18)
Elihu's speech
and other similar biblical scripture were part of Hawthorne's personal
conceptual beliefs. His foundation
consisted of these early Puritanical Christian precepts. These teachings reveal the significance as to
the reason he believed dreams to be a reflection of the waking mind and
subsequent approaching events. The Bible
was considered the law among Puritanists and sacred biblical history is
threaded with incidents of dream
prophecy. The mystery that surrounds
human existence and the need to trust God was imbedded in Hawthorne's own
infrastructure at a profound level.
Hawthorne believed that mankind simply did not have enough knowledge to
explain why things happen the way they do, and that people do not so much need
answers to life's problems, as they need God Himself. Hawthorne created angles in his writings by
identifying sin and secrecy that were imbued in the ecclesiastical and
hypocritical conventionalities of his day and paralleled this with biblical
prophecy and references. Hawthorne was
raised on the biblical teachings of Christ and he astutely perceived that doubt
and temptation marred moral instincts in mankind. It is apparent that Hawthorne believed that
God, through a person's spiritual self, approaches them while they are asleep
to impress upon them His instructions.
Hawthorne's tendency to project his ideals into his characters by having
them dream encourages his readers to recognize God's laws.
Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel,
recognized and documented his father's utilization of dreams by writing volumes
of notes pertaining to many of his short stories. In Julian Hawthorne's, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, Volume I,
Chapter 9--Notes for Stories and Essays, Julian takes note of the specific
injection of dreams in his father's tales.
To write a dream which shall
resemble the real course of
a dream, with all its
inconsistency, its strange transformations,
which are all taken as a matter of
course; its eccentricities and
aimlessness, --with nevertheless a
leading idea running through
the whole. Up to this old age of the world, no such
thing has
ever been written. (Par. 4)
Hawthorne lived
in an era of Christian premise which disallowed him to verbally voice
observations and subsequent opinions of
his perceptions regarding man's sinful and secret nature. The Puritanistic attitudes were firmly rooted
in the communities of his day. These
attitudes were regarded with a stern morality, that anything pleasurable or
luxuriously indulgent was sinful. He
cleverly wove dreams into his writing to expose, without compromising his
Christian stature, that hipocracy and
sin was rampant in the hostile Puritan environment. It is important to note that Hawthorne could
not openly voice his observations of mankind for fear of persecution. The dreams he wove into his stories were a
shrewd outlet for his convictions.
Hawthorne was at the forefront of a pioneering effort to couple biblical
laws with creatively written stories as an art form. It is historically known that Hawthorne is
one of the first major American writers of fiction to focus on the interior
lives of his characters and express his biblical views through what was
considered the deeper psychology of art.
His son, Julian, clearly recognizes this logic and specifically details
the fact that his father uses dreams as a way of revealing these concepts.
In many of Hawthorne's chronicles it is
apparent that he significantly believes that dreams are a window into a
person's soul. His writings reveal many
major truths that people do not openly admit; their proclivity to give in to
evil through secrecy and denial and ignore God laws in the process. His personal beliefs were that there was an
existence of an active evil, most likely the devil, and that people were
predestined to be constrained by him.
Throughout much of his prose, Hawthorne's dreams can be considered a
pious warning for his characters to recognize what propels them to commit
sin in their waking moments or perhaps
advise them of impending evil and sin.
It is also through this use of dreams,
that Hawthorne gently coerces his readers to explore their own inner
souls and search for truths within the confounds of their dreams. He recurrently allows the reader to make a personal decision
as to the purpose for the story. This
can be compared to how one makes a personal decision to follow God's Holy
laws. Hawthorne's divine implications
are paramount in exposing the conflicts that mankind encounters when choosing
between good and evil. Through the
expression of dreams, he masterfully generates reverent introspection and opens
the window into the human soul. It is
known that dreams provide a person with a unique view of themselves that often
comes from a deeper and wiser part of their psyche. It can be concluded that a person should seek to counterbalance their
dreams with conscious waking perceptions.
This is akin to Hawthorne's style of writing and his unique way of
presenting human truths. It is perhaps
best to agree with the French writer, Michel de Montaigne that, "Dreams are the true interpreters of our
inclinations..."
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