Comparing the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller Essays

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. --William Saroyan Although this approach to living life may be humorous and simplistic, William Saroyan describes a common need of people to live wholly and experience life at its fullest. 'Carpe diem' is a phrase that is familiar to more than just Latin scholars. This need for fullness in one’s life also stems a need for completeness. At one time or another most people have experienced the desire to be ‘whole’ – to feel complete and well rounded. Children want to become adults as quickly as possible, students want to become better educated, and college graduates long to find that self-defining career all in the name of becoming a ‘complete’ person. Of course, this could be a reflection of a personal crisis as a graduating senior, but it nonetheless seems to be a universal longing. This longing for fullness and wholeness transcends time and is found in both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller’s works, albeit in different ways. Summer on the Lakes was written during a period of hiatus and reflection in Fuller’s life. There is a sense of seeking and desiring new experiences that permeates this work, a need to experience new things in order to continually learn and grow as a person. Part of this desire could come from her views on the rights of women to be recognized as whole citizens and people in America in the nineteenth century; also imparted in her discourse is her longing for women to simply want more for themselves. In the following passage, Fuller describes the girls and women in an Oregon farming town. She lament... ...se of being in the process. By diminishing a complete person to parts, Hawthorne demonstrates that a whole sense of being is important and should not be destroyed. Both authors seem to be making statements on wholeness and attaining a sense of completeness in life. Fuller demonstrates this by wanting a sense of wholeness for individual people and by seeing beauty in nature in terms of fullness. Hawthorne shows the reader what can happen if you strip a person of their sense of being; a composite person should not be reduced to parts and destroyed. This theme of desiring wholeness defined by these nineteenth century authors, Fuller and Hawthorne, transcends time and appeals to readers today. As someone still searching for that sense of wholeness, it is reassuring and exciting to find literature that subtly examines personal journeys that are still experienced today.