In “The Custom House” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses figurative language and negative diction to potray the US government in a negative light after losing his job at the customs house. Hawthrne compares the government to the national bird, the bald eagle. He describes the eagle as a “unhappy fowl,she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye” who “..has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods.” Hawthorne potrays the government as unhappy and rather mean with no kindness in it. She attacks those who sit under her for protection despite her vixenly looks and their itrustion onto her premises. The government is labled as cruel and unforgiving to it’s citizens with the line “is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her claw, a
