Worldview Analysis of The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Use your background knowledge of Nathaniel Hawthornes life,

American Romanticism, and the text The House of Seven Gables to discuss these Socratic questions with your teacher and classmates. 1. Who is the author? Did the author suffer any hardships in his life that might have made him think or feel a certain way about his subject? 2. When did the author live? Does the author refer to the events of his lifetime in his story? 3. What did the author believe? Was the author associated with a particular social cause or movement (Examples include temperance, abolitionism, womens suffrage, civil rights, Puritanism, etc) 4. Was the author associated with a particular intellectual school or mode of literature? (examples include Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Existentialism, Naturalism, Realism, Postmodernism, etc) 5. What did the author believe to be the driving force that causes human events? Chance? Fate? Mans free will? God? 6. Do the answers to the above three questions influence the authors story? In what ways? 7. What does the story say about human nature? Do human beings have souls? Eternal ones? 8. Do human beings exist for a purpose? What is it? 9. What does the story say about God? Does the world of the story include a God or higher power that governs events in some way? Is the higher power assumed to exist or is it mentioned explicitly? 10. What does the story say about the natural world? What rules govern the natural world in the story? 11. Is the natural world a source of good or evil in the story? What good things does it produce? What evil things? 12. Are human relationships the source or occasion for good or evil in the story? What good things do they produce? What evil things? 13. How does the story measure or define a good life? 14. How does the story measure or define failure? Unhappiness? Futility? Evil? 15. Are the storys characters powerless against the evil of the story? 16. Must they depend on outside help to overcome it? What sort of help? 17. Do the characters have to change in order to overcome evil? In what ways? 18. Do human relationships play a role in overcoming evil? What sort of role? 19. Do the storys answers to the above four questions tell the truth? 20. What does the story say about love? What behaviors in the story go by the name of love? 21. Does the story demonstrate the implications of the authors views in some way?

2012 Paideia Academy, English Language and Composition, Mrs. Brenda Sain