A Study On John Endicott In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stories

Nathaniel Hawthorne plays an important role in American literature history. There are a great number of researches on Nathaniel Hawthorne and his works in domestic academic circle since long time ago. However, most of the researches are about The Scarlet Letter, and most of the theme is religion. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a fruitful writer; he created lots of literary works and characters beside the famous The Scarlet Letter. John Endicott is an important figure in American early history. Nathaniel Hawthorne mentioned and recreated three different kinds of John Endicott in his three stories—"The Maypole of Merry Mount","Endicott and the Red Cross"’ and "The Gentle Boy". At the same time, these three works became one important source for the people who want to know the history in his time. There are few researches focused on these three stories in domestic academic circle, and even fewer researchers have paid attention to comparing John Endicott in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories with the historical prototype, the real John Endicott. Analyzing from this angle, the research in this paper is pioneering.For Americans, the appearance of Puritans, the Puritan teaching, and the Puritan efforts keynoted the American Spirit. Puritans brought Puritanism from England to the North America. With the leading of this kind of spirit, Puritans worked hard, pioneered an enterprise with painstaking efforts and settled the rudiment of America and American social ideology, which influences Americans generation by generation. For Americans, Puritanism is not only a kind of religious thoughts but also a kind of weltanshauung and lifestyle. It is just American Spirit that created the essential American character and the values. John Endicott, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony Bay, is the typical symbol of the special American Spirit. Therefore, the study on John Endicott is meaningful. However, when creating John Endicott, Nathaniel Hawthorne changed some historical facts according to his certain aims. In this paper, the similarities and the differences between the historical John Endicott and the three different Nathaniel Hawthorne’s John Endicott are researched through comparing the different John Endicott, which aims at making readers more clearly understand John Endicott in history and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s John Endicott.