9/10/2023 0 Comments Custom house sketchHe finishes “The Custom-House” with a description of his life since leaving his job as Surveyor, and comments that "it may be. Hawthorne remarks that he is lucky to have been let go, since it allowed him the time to write out the entire story of The Scarlet Letter. Three years after taking his job as Surveyor, General Taylor was elected President of the United States, and Hawthorne received notice of his termination. This is the story that Hawthorne claims is the basis for The Scarlet Letter. The package contains some fabric with a faded letter A imprinted on the cloth, with some papers describing the entire story behind the letter. Hawthorne says that the large upstairs hall was used to store documents, and it is here that he has found an unusual package. The upstairs of the Custom House was designed to accommodate a large movement of goods through the port, and it is in ill repair since it soon became extraneous. The Inspector is the most light-hearted of the workers, constantly laughing and talking in spite of his age. As for the Inspector, his job was created by the man's father decades earlier, and he has held the position ever since. General Miller, the Collector, is the oldest inhabitant, a man who maintained a stellar career in the military but who has chosen to work in the Custom House for the remainder of his years. Much of the story then deals with long descriptions of the various men with whom he worked in the Custom House. When discussing his ancestors, Hawthorne is both reverent and mocking, jokingly wondering how an idler such as himself could have born from such noble lineage. He describes his ancestors as severe Puritans decked out in black robes, laying harsh judgment upon people who strayed from their faith. Hawthorne's family originally settled in Salem, and he is a direct descendent of several notable ancestors. The connection between Salem and the Puritans is made early on. The Custom House serves the small ship traffic going through the port, but it is usually a quiet place requiring only minimal work. The streets and buildings are dilapidated, the townspeople are very sober and old, and grass grows between the cobblestones. Salem is a port city that failed to mature into a major harbor. Hawthorne tells the reader that he could not bring himself to fire any of them, so after he assumed leadership, things stayed the same. He describes his staff as a bunch of tottering old men who rarely rise out of their chairs and who spend each day sleeping or talking softly to one another. His analysis of the place is harsh and critical. Hawthorne (as narrator) was granted the position of chief executive officer of the Custom House through the president's commission. It also serves as an excellent essay on society during Hawthorne's times, and it allows Hawthorne to add an imaginative literary device, the romantic pretense of having discovered the manuscript of The Scarlet Letter in the Custom House. It was written to enlarge the tale of The Scarlet Letter, since Hawthorne deemed the story too short to print by itself. The Custom House is largely an autobiographical sketch describing Hawthorne's life as an administrator of the Salem Custom House.
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