Against Puritans

王文杰

    Hawthorne believes that "original sin" is the root of evil, and it is precisely because of this innate original sin that it manifests itself in various sins in real life. Mr. Brown is a devout Calvinist, with a good family background and a happy newlywed life, who believes deeply in his faith and believes that he will eventually go to heaven. At the beginning of the article, it is stated that he is going to carry out a mysterious mission. On the way to meet the devil, the narrator also informs the reader through Brown's psychological description that Mr. Brown's mission is evil. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to use the mystical mission as a reflection of original sin, and the devil is actually Mr. Brown's ancestor, symbolizing the original sin that Mr. Brown carries. He was explaining to the old man that he was late because he said that Firth had stopped him, that is, that his faith had always prevented him from going to evil, but that the evil in his own heart led him to move forward despite his wife's objections.
    When talking about his ancestors, he thought of his ancestors as "honest good people, honest Christians", but the devil quickly interrupted him: "Well said... Your grandfather was a sheriff, and when he ordered a Quaker woman to parade the streets and whip her fiercely... It was I who lit a pine branch from my hearth and gave it to your father with my own hands, so that he could set fire to the Indian village." Mr. Brown's honest ancestors were actually murderous and arsonist swordsmen, which further proved that people are completely corrupt. Through his detailed and psychological descriptions, Hawthorne shows his satirical and critical attitude towards some of the teachings of Puritanism.
    What Mr. Brown saw and heard after entering the forest was a concentrated expression of Hawthorne's attitude towards Puritanism. When he first entered the forest, Brown saw his doctrinal teacher, Old Lady Crawes, who had been Mr. Brown's moral and spiritual mentor. As teachers, we should abide by the teachings, but we hear evil voices in her words. The anointing ritual is a very sacred ritual in Christianity, a symbol of deification or ordination, but she uses the grease of an evil newborn, and she even accepts a cane from the devil, and despite her old age and infirmity, hurries to the forest to meet.
    Brown then met Deacon Gu Jin, who worshiped and prayed at home, and the pastor, who spoke endlessly about the sacred religious teachings from the pulpit. Then he saw many people in the town, some of whom "may appear at the table of the Great Provincial Council the next day," some of whom "can be seen on the Sabbath," and even shamans who have recited horrific incantations, where "good does not refuse to be in the company of evil, and sinners are not ashamed of seeing saints." The fact that a party attended by all kinds of people speaks volumes that this is not a sacred gathering. Hawthorne's depiction of the actions and language of these people through Brown's perspective, as well as the narrator's psychological depiction of Brown, show a satire of the Puritans. These people, ostensibly spiritual leaders who strictly adhered to the Puritan teachings, knew the teachings well, but in fact they also went to forest meetings full of evil, fully embodying the hypocrisy of the Puritans, which Hawthorne mercilessly exposed.
    The devil's words at the meeting were Hawthorne's direct description of the inherent evil of human nature, mercilessly criticizing the crimes of the Puritans who were respectable and upright in real life, the priests molesting handmaids, women murdering their husbands, and pure girls burying their babies. All these behaviors are forbidden by Puritanism, but the manifestation of these devout believers is enough to show that although Puritanism superficially regulates people's behavior, it actually makes people live in the world more hypocritically. And the devil's speech directly exposed the inherent evil of human nature in the Puritan teachings. Priests, deacons, doctrinal teachers, and devout Puritans, all of whom came to the devil's meeting to show their deepest evil, Hawthorne wrote through the mouth of the devil his attitude towards Puritism and his dislike for the hypocritical Puritans.