24 pages • 48 minutes read
Nathaniel HawthorneThe Ambitious Guest
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1835A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Foreshadowing
“The Ambitious Guest” contains many instances of foreshadowing, a literary device that offers readers hints about a story’s events or outcomes.
In the second paragraph, the wind causes a “sound of wailing and lamentation” (299). Later in the story, the wind sounds “as if a funeral were passing” (305). In both instances, the sound of the wind refers to death and mourning, indicating that something terrible will happen to the family and the guest. The guest, the father, and the grandmother all mention their own deaths and how they would like to die. The repeated mention of death throughout the story foreshadows the deaths of the characters at the end of the story. Similarly, when the rocks are heard “rushing down the steep side of the mountain” (300), this action foreshadows how the family will die since they die in a landslide. Another moment of foreshadowing occurs when, having listened to the grandmother’s tale of an old superstition, the guest asks how “unknown and undistinguished” mariners at sea feel when they can feel the ship sinking into “that wide and nameless sepulchre” (306). Here, the guest may as well be talking about his own future because, like the mariners, he will be buried, unknown and undistinguished, beneath a landslide.
Hawthorne uses foreshadowing to create a bleak atmosphere in the story that pits the warmth of the familial setting inside the inn against the cold, imperious setting of the mountains outside the home. Foreshadowing also allows Hawthorne to build tension in the story, to create anticipation until the climax of the story, when the family realizes that they will die.
Irony
As a literary device, irony involves a tension between expectations and reality. In “The Ambitious Guest,” irony is connected to the theme of Human Ambition Versus fate because while the characters have their expectations about life and death, the reality that they are confronted with at the end of the story is the exact opposite of those expectations.
The guest wants a “monument” for himself; however, he dies with nothing. Instead, people “suppose that a stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful night […] Others den[y] that there [a]re sufficient grounds for such a conjecture” (307). Not only did the stranger die without having built his name for people to remember him by, but people also didn’t even know if he was there or not. Similarly, the father dies with his family under a landslide, not in a nice town with friendly neighbors who know his name, while the grandmother dies without someone holding a mirror over her corpse so that she may see if “all’s right” (305).
Imagery
Imagery uses language that appeals to the five senses to create vivid pictures in the reader’s imagination. In “The Ambitious Guest,” imagery is primarily created through sound, touch, and, to a lesser extent, sight. The most consistent imagery in the short story is the sound that the wind makes when it passes through the Notch, sounding like a mourner or “like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast” (305), which expresses the haunting and wild nature around the cottage. The second most consistent imagery in the short story relates to the fire inside the cottage. The fire employs sound, sight, and touch to create a sense of warmth, safety, and joy inside the cottage, which sharply contrasts with the wild and evocative reality outside the cottage.
Personification
Personification is a figure of speech that attributes human characteristics to non-human subjects. In “The Ambitious Guest,” personification is used primarily to describe nature and ascribe human attributes to the natural world around the inn. The wind is described as “wailing” like a mourning person (299), while the rocks coming down the side of the mountain are likened to “something like a heavy footstep” (300). The mountain is described as an “old neighbour” (301), and the pass is described as a “great artery” through which commerce flows from one side to another (299).
Personification, along with metaphors, similes, and descriptive language, creates imagery in the short story, which helps the reader visualize the harshness of the natural world around the Notch, as well as understand how the family negotiates their position in the world. To create a sense of safety and familiarity with their surroundings, the father calls the mountain an “old neighbour,” trying to put themselves on equal footing with the natural world.
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By Nathaniel Hawthorne
