Guilt is the driving force of life for the husband of Dorcas Bourne. On the other end of the spectrum, love seeps out of everything act and notion said by Dorcas. As depicted in the short story, Roger Malvin’s Burial, Nathaniel Hawethorne utilizes the virtuous character of Dorcas in the last few pages to intensify the horrific, sacrificial death of her son. First, to start the scene, Hawethorne has Dorcas spreading out a “snow-white cloth” on a tree for dinner {73}. These specific words allude to innocence and purity while eclipsed by a sense of impending doom foreshadowed on the reader. The story continues with her son leaving to hunter with his father who had left a time before. Then Dorcas begins to sing a haunting melody from her youth
