The Biblical Sources of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”

Extract

Although the wealth of religious imagery in Hawthorne's “Roger Marvin's Burial” has been frequently remarked, little attempt has been made to identify specific Biblical allusions for the purpose of analyzing them in the light of the story in which they appear. This neglect of an important aspect of the author's complex method of composition extends to the whole of his work and is the result of a generally held, though ill-defined, idea that such allusions, stemming as they do from the author's known familiarity with the Bible, represent pure overflow and are not truly integral to the pieces in which they are embedded. Nathalia Wright, for example, has observed that compared to Melville, Hawthorne made “slight and straightforward use of Scripture.” I submit that a more rigorous examination of Hawthorne's use of the Bible than has heretofore been made will reveal the reverse to be true. His employment of Scripture is extensive, subtle, and must be considered an organic aspect of a most complex literary method. An analysis of the uses to which Hawthorne put his Biblical sources in “Roger Malvin's Burial” will serve to illustrate the case in point.