Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux": Irrationalism

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is a short story, that represents irony. Irony refers to differences between reality and appearance, or between what a person thinks is true and what is actually true. The symbols of irony in the story show how Robin, the main character discovers in his ocean journey, the reality of his relative, and know the way of dealing with town's citizens. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is about a …

…people who are close to nature, and town represents industrial, civilization and modernism. So readers of this story can believe that town's environment is strange and different to Robin than village environment where he is used to "Strange things we travelers see!"(1230), which leads him to think that town's people are moving to religious issues rather than any other issue "one solitary ray had dared to rest upon the opened page of the great bible" (1230).