Optimism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life

Normally, a man who writes about sin and the failures of mankind wouldn’t be considered a very optimistic person. Nathaniel Hawthorne, however, is a special case. It would be easy to assume, of course, that he had no faith in humanity, but a deeper look into both his life and his writing reveals the opposite. He said it himself in his American Note-Books, “What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew how to seek for it.” Hawthorne’s personal life was full of tragic incidents, and yet it also shows the most proof of his optimism. His father died when he was a young boy, and a few years later an accident while playing baseball left him lame for almost a year. Unlike most young boys, Hawthorne didn’t let it get to him. Instead, he describes the time that his family spent living with his uncles as “the most delightful days” of his life. Later, as a writer, he was at first extremely unsuccessful, with his first stories earning him only a dollar or two. He kept at it, of course, and today is renowned as one of the founders of American Literature. Finally, as an old man, he lived in an American society on the brink of Civil War, and yet he was still quoted as saying “There is no shadow, no antiquity, no …show more content…
“Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable,” Voltaire once said, and Hawthorne seems to do just this. Whether it is one of his short stories or The Scarlet Letter, there always seems to be hope and a future for the main character. In Young Goodman Brown, a man searches for his wife, and symbolically, his faith, despite being surrounded by the devil and a satanist town. In The Minister’s Black Veil,” a pastor separates himself from society with a black veil, and yet still focuses on his eventual heavenly rewards, instead of his downfall on Earth. Each character has their own optimism, which is simply Hawthorne expressing his