Short essays on Hawthorne, Dickinson, Gothic Literature, and Ahab.

By Lee A. Zito 1.Puritan heritage influenced Hawthorne greatly. It was so much apart of his upbringing and family life that there was no way he could escape it. Interestingly enough, his father was a judge who proceeded over the Salem Witch Trials. The ideas of Puritanism were forced on to Hawthorne. He felt suffocated and imprisoned by the strict religious life. His writing is an outlet for his feelings and emotions of the Puritan …

…insists on seeking out the whale because he thinks he himself as invincible. Dickinson tends to write a lot about the theme of death. She romanticizes with death, she yearns for death, and she even writes death as a character. Dickinson's use of death throughout her work is something that is always identified with her. There is no question that she was truly obsessed and fascinated with death itself, enough to make her commit suicide.