The Wives of the Dead

How does Nathaniel Hawthorne use imagery in The Wives of the Dead?

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Hawthorne employs other visual symbolic imagery such as the lantern, the hearth, morning mist, and windows to emphasize the relationship between truth and seeing, sight and insight. For example, after Goodman Parker reports to Margaret that her husband is still alive, the narrator says that Parker's lantern "gleamed along the street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments of a world, like order glimmering through chaos." Such a description embodies Margaret's response to the good news.

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The Wives of the Dead