An Absurdly Over-Ambitious-and-Lofty Term Paper Prospectus

“Wakefield”, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short piece – or how we’ll refer to it at this juncture – is as engaging as it is confounding. It is a psychological piece that utilizes adroit narrative power to prompt the reader to elevated thinking. It is a systematic sequence of words that maneuvers itself on many planes, blurring the lines between sketch and tale and beyond. Within deterministic and labyrinth-like boundaries of “Wakefield” there also lies the enigmatic presence of free will – a setting that we all, at some point or another, feel apart of in this crazy thing called life.

It has been suggested by some that “Wakefield” can be considered an “Illustrated Idea”; A structure composed of an essay-like statement of concept followed by dramatized illustration – and, I like this. It has also been posited that the piece can be considered another one of Hawthorne’s allegories. But, at an extreme level, and considering the text itself, seeing “Wakefield” as an allegory seems too pithy: Solitude makes a person an “Outcast of the Universe”. I propose that there are greater, more significant things at work here - fundamental, philosophical ideas that effect our interactions with the world. Yes. This is about thinking, reasoning, our essence, what separates mankind from dumb beasts. “Wakefield” is Hawthorne embracing the concept of the written word to elevate man’s awareness.

Using the news story of a man abandoning his wife for 20 years (only to return as if from a days absence), Hawthorne’s narrator summarizes the story and then imagines it in detail, hoping to appeal to the “general sympathies of man.” The narrator invites us, the readers, to consider the summary of the news story and come to our own conclusions right there in the piece’s second paragraph; or, we can tag along with the narrator as he imagines the story of Wakefield and together we can work out a moral. Naturally, we continue onward through the narrator’s imagination. But he details with a skillful, seductive, ambiguous and sometimes flat-out contradictory manner that some readers of “Wakefield” may find themselves no better off - no more enlightened - than the title character was during his thoughtlessly executed “whim-wham”.

It is in the examination of the narrator’s treatment of the subject matter – of the dramatized illustration – that we can glimpse the magnitude of what Hawthorne is doing with “Wakefield.” The piece’s technical merit is what elevates and inspires the reader. In researching, it will be necessary to branch out and consult fellow-thinkers in other disciplines such as logic and even epistemology. Likewise, visiting other artisans of narrative structure would help inform this developing argument of text and the necessity of awareness. In a critical approach, we can, perhaps, join beside the many scholarly articles of interpretation of “Wakefield”. The majority of these view different symbolic aspects of the story, touching on themes like Solitude, and Mid-life journeys. While these are worthwhile approaches and useful to filling in details, I suggest that we take a step back and look at the text itself – to see it as a suspended multi-colored Spirograph design, a perpetual work that has no ending nor beginning, but arcs out and returns back to its center.