The Hollow of the three hills
The Hollow of the three hills
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story begins on a paradox. He writes ‘’in those strange old times…’’ yet the time period hasn’t been specified at all. This can be seen as a deliberate attempt at vagueness. Hawthorne is trying to distort the reader’s sense of time as most successful gothic stories take place in haunted settings outside specific time periods.
The rest of the paragraph has been devoted to the description of the setting. The Hollow is a place of dark magic where no living thing exists. In fact at that present moment the setting is made even more haunted by the fact that everything including the daylight is dying. The season also seems to be of autumn when flowers and trees die. The pool is full of putrid water when in fact the water should be completely pure having been drained from the hills.
A characterization contrast is also presented in the beginning. The withered old crone and the beautiful young lady. Hawthorne has made use of a lovely metaphor to describe the lady’s despondence ‘’smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her years’’. The crone does not appear to be an ordinary human being for she is so old that ‘’even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human existence’’. Their meeting is clandestine and there is a sense of urgency and all this gives the reader and indication that something is severely wrong.
The first paragraph plays an important part in setting the tone and mood of the story. It develops the setting, the characterization and also evokes the supernatural through the setting.
The lady then proceeds to lay her head down in the crone’s lap as she is instructed. This is a subversion of a child laying her head in a mother’s lap for comfort. A subversion because the lady will find no comfort with the evil woman.
The lady has in fact committed adultery and as a result was forced to run away from her home or else face dire
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story begins on a paradox. He writes ‘’in those strange old times…’’ yet the time period hasn’t been specified at all. This can be seen as a deliberate attempt at vagueness. Hawthorne is trying to distort the reader’s sense of time as most successful gothic stories take place in haunted settings outside specific time periods.
The rest of the paragraph has been devoted to the description of the setting. The Hollow is a place of dark magic where no living thing exists. In fact at that present moment the setting is made even more haunted by the fact that everything including the daylight is dying. The season also seems to be of autumn when flowers and trees die. The pool is full of putrid water when in fact the water should be completely pure having been drained from the hills.
A characterization contrast is also presented in the beginning. The withered old crone and the beautiful young lady. Hawthorne has made use of a lovely metaphor to describe the lady’s despondence ‘’smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her years’’. The crone does not appear to be an ordinary human being for she is so old that ‘’even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human existence’’. Their meeting is clandestine and there is a sense of urgency and all this gives the reader and indication that something is severely wrong.
The first paragraph plays an important part in setting the tone and mood of the story. It develops the setting, the characterization and also evokes the supernatural through the setting.
The lady then proceeds to lay her head down in the crone’s lap as she is instructed. This is a subversion of a child laying her head in a mother’s lap for comfort. A subversion because the lady will find no comfort with the evil woman.
The lady has in fact committed adultery and as a result was forced to run away from her home or else face dire