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Narrative Authority In Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest", Rebecca Belcher-Rankin
Narrative Authority In Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest", Rebecca Belcher-Rankin
Faculty Scholarship – English
August 28, 1826, a landslide in the White Mountains of New Hampshire caused the death of the Samuel Willey family when they left their home for a shelter. The slide split to either side of the house, leaving it intact while burying the family in the shelter. Hawthorne published the event as a short story in the New-England Journal, changing many aspects. Taking such liberties suggests that Hawthorne intended to use the account as fodder for his Romantic agenda: "to present [the] truth under circumstances... of the writer’s own choosing or creation." A close examination of the text reveals that …