In my Study In American Authors: A Study in Nathaniel Hawthorne class, we were assigned with, after having read his works all semester, coming up with questions we would like to ask him in an interview. Each student submitted questions, and the prof picked the ones she thought fruitful to the assignment. Unless you're familiar with Hawthorne, this might be kind of pointless for you to read, but the purpose of the assignment was to see how well you could emulate his very unique writing style, language, personality, and point of view. If you happen to have read him, let me know what you think!
In Which Mr. Interviewer Interviews Mr. Hawthorne
Interviewer: Mr. Hawthorne, thank you for this opportunity to interview you. I have some questions which many of your readers are eager to get answers to, and I hope you would enjoy answering them.
Hawthorne: I only hope that my answers will truly serve useful, even should they appear perhaps gratuitous or unsatisfying, for some questions have no clear answers, or no clear answers that should necessarily be shared, though I do indeed intend to provide some blossom of understanding to address my readers’ concerns.
Interviewer: I certainly trust your judgment, Mr. Hawthorne. You have many interesting stories, both short ones and full length novels, and they are filled with incredibly intriguing characters, displaying in your writing a wonderful understanding of human psychology. Readers have, therefore, voted often on this question: Which character in your stories do you feel is most representative of yourself?
Hawthorne: It is not my wish to deny, Mr. Interviewer, that as I endeavor to create the characters within my stories, that some facets of the writer do not in fact spill over to the content of these fictitious personas. The reader might seek to assign, therefore, a single such literary apparition as reflective of my inmost me, yet I can only caution against such simplicity of perception. Pursuing such a resolve, accusers might wish to say that certain of my characters are, rather than a writer’s conjurations, merely penned doppelgangers discretely disclosing attitudes of their author. Creatures of Faery Land cannot be supposed but to, when taken out of their imaginary surroundings, appear similar by an accident of precision to images in reality. Readers must then assume a suitable remoteness between the writer and his work, since to obsessively assume intimate truths as divulged in these characters, and loudly rather than privately pursue and announce these truths against the writer’s protest, would prove a violation of an individual’s sanctity.
Interviewer: A very interesting answer, Mr. Hawthorne. I sense, then, some ambiguity over this issue, that on the one hand you admit that writers put some of themselves into their characters, but that those characters are not therefore the writers themselves.
Hawthorne: Yes, you have understood me well as regards this matter. I have little else to say about it, except perhaps that when dealing with the moonlight of romance one must be cautious about making assumptions or focusing on a point too narrowly, while not being entirely dismissive of what is revealed in suchlike imaginative illumination.
Interviewer: I can see what you mean, Mr. Hawthorne. Thank you for that clarification. My second question is concerning your work, “The Scarlet Letter,” recognizing the themes of guilt and the shame of adultery that is portrayed within it. Do you believe it would be better to accept that public shame, or partake in abortion so as not to be found out?
Hawthorne: It is ever a burden, and yet by nature the right, for any heart to bear secret sin, which behind the private veil it may enfeeble and torment a hidden soul with fierce voracity, and leads the imagination to summon a host of accusing spirits and devils jabbing their fingers in such a way as to remind one of his past misdeeds. Man has not the right to push behind that sacred cloth of privacy, to learn what only the Divine may rightly reveal, against the will or without the knowledge of an otherwise guarded heart. Nonetheless, the very nature of women is bound with certain lofty duties, to those maternal affections which separate them from the mean and selfish passions of men, and redeem them to a noble quality, willing for the sake of a motherly bond to endure any punishment, even should it be exile or martyrdom, if only she might not be forced to relinquish her child. It would, methinks, be a grave violation of the natural way of women to allow harm to come to their children, and endure the public eye, whose intrusive probing, while unjust and irreverent, this notwithstanding could never surpass the strength of maternal instinct.
Interviewer: It seems that you hold women in high regard, Mr. Hawthorne, at least in this respect.
Hawthorne: Indeed, one might suggest the power of woman to be such that when one grasps her hand, and feels it in his own, he has touched something of warmth and substance, which proves so compelling as to assure your place in humanity and restore belief that the world is not merely a delusion. I could not then, with this in mind, ever believe that a woman would allow herself to treat her unborn child with such a morbid lack of passion.
Interviewer: I think I agree with you, Mr. Hawthorne. Our next question is concerning your pervasive interest with history. Some readers of your work think that perhaps you are too concerned with the past, stuck in sort of a historical muck that renders you, and by your feelings the rest of mankind, incapable of moving forward. How would you respond to such a concern?
Hawthorne: Man has always possessed the questionable inclination to attempt leaving his baggage behind him, to try and burn the past as one might discard trash upon an enormous bonfire. There is both truth and error in such an endeavor, for certainly to be chained forever by the institutions of shadowy ghosts and dead men could only lead to a death of progress itself. Be that as it may, one must reject the notion that mankind’s reach for divinity is like some straight line, heading directly for that Celestine destination. To the contrary, blindness to our past could only reduce us to a torpor of ridiculous repetition, like a circle of drunken revelers far too imbibed with self-deception to realize the deathlike futility of their vain pleasures. So perhaps ignorance of the past allows frivolous and even harmonious movement, yet it does not allow progress, enclosing us in a mere mimicry of substantial change. But an ill replacement of this thoughtless obscurity would be to unquestioningly worship the iron armor of the past as some do, weighing down heavily any hint at positive change. If we are to have progress in the future, it must then be with the past in our sight, so that our change is not as ineffective and pointless as the figures upon an organ grinder. We must see that life is mud as well as marble, and then we might see the progress of mankind, not as the ideal and fallacious image of linear growth, but instead of a slow, spiraling ascent from our misdeeds. I do not propose that we study the past as to reproduce it and therefore bring nothing real or new to pass, but instead that we do not forget those essential institutions of the human race, institutions which give man a sense of his identity and provide stability that is necessary to lasting progress.
Interviewer: So, you are saying that radical reform is bad, but slow, prudent change is a better way?
Hawthorne: That is just the thing, Mr. Interviewer. Radical reform is a machine which may only serve to produce individual morality for the wholesale manufacturer and a world which is dizzy and ever shifting, rather than leading to thoughts which might allow self-awareness or a society given to any moral depth. The path heavenward is a very difficult one to tread upon, and to persevere through it one must never forget the gloom of the world and the moral seriousness of man’s condition.
Interviewer: That is a very interesting perception, Mr. Hawthorne. I have one final question for you. As a writer, do you feel that isolation allows a healthy existence? As a mere surveyor of customs, can one truly benefit more at a distance than from a life of human connections?
Hawthorne: In isolation, one’s secret thoughts may become like a chain binding one’s spirit. There is a dual impulse in the guilty, at once telling the hidden soul to divulge its secrets, and yet shaming one into silence. Hidden sins are corrosive to the heart of man, yet while it is a difficult burden to bear, it is not ever the place for another to intrude upon. He must anon go forth in torment, appearing to his fellow creatures as without blemish, like new-fallen snow, filled with inequity and unable to rid himself of it of his own accord. The writer is by nature one that observes his fellow man, and seeks to find some blossom of moral truth therein as he offers his possessed manuscript to the reader. Yet, he must never invade the sanctity of the human heart as he watches others, being careful to afford others the safeguard of their veil, within which they have perforce buried the secrets of their inmost self. Human connections are then not to violate this principle, for no mortal has the right to try and do so.
Interviewer: Mr. Hawthorne, it has been a great pleasure to be able to hear your thoughts and responses to questions from your readers. Thank you for your time.
