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What is the point of the ambitious guest?
Hawthorne’s story’s purpose is to show the futility of ambition. The ambitious guest who arrives as the cottage plans to leave his mark on the world so that he will be remembered after he has died. The cottage family is content to live a humble and obscure, but happy, existence.
I shall have built my monument!” The irony is increased by the fact that the young guest’s expression of his intense ambition causes members of the family to confess that they too have ambitions. Even the grandmother tells the family that she is ambitious to have a good funeral and to look well in her coffin.
Who is the antagonist in the ambitious guest?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The Ambitious Guest” Antagonist: Nathaniel Hawthorne was an early American novelist and short story writer, born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804.
What was the image of the eldest daughter in The Ambitious Guest?
The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness, the children laughed, the eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother was the image of happiness grown old.
What is the foreshadowing in The Ambitious Guest?
Even in the first paragraph, Hawthorne foreshadows approaching disaster: They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
What is the time period of The Ambitious Guest?
To top this off, the cottage is shadowed by an enormous, steep mountain which towers above it and threatens to unleash a rockslide that could kill them all at a moment’s notice. The time of year is autumn: September. It is night and a family is gathered around their fireplace. The setting in the house is cozy and warm.
Who dies in The Ambitious Guest?
They scream in fear of “The Slide!” and bolt outside for their safe place. But they are all caught up in the rock slide and killed, while the house is completely undamaged. Their bodies are swept away and never found. Locals mourn the loss of the family but are unaware of their ambitious guest.