Black Flower Of Puritan Society Essay

The prison is often seen as a “black flower” of a civilized society. Hawthorne makes examples of decay and evil through the architecture of society: The wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World…It seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.(Hawthorne 45)
This passage vividly shows the reader not only how the prison is a dark and evil place in society but also an example of death and decay, which binds its defective traits to the people and town in and around the prison. The true darkness of Puritan society is shown through these symbols of death and decay. In contrast to the prison’s dark and grim character is the beautiful
To show these features, the author uses a buried Puritan as an example of sin, “Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds had sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest a buried crime”(Hawthorne 119). The description of black weeds springing from the heart of a buried sinner uncovers how decay is related to sin and evil. The weeds are black because of the mass of sin and evil in the person’s heart which is buried beneath. From the beginning of the novel, Hawthorne shows the reader his disgust and hatred of Puritans and Puritan society. Hawthorne uses this buried character as a prime example of Puritans and Puritanism as a