Analysis of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The work was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”, is a short story that follows a young man named Robin during an earlier date. This man came to Boston via a ferry in order to search for his kinsman named Major Molineux, who is an official in the British Colonial government. This story has a fairly optimistic tone to it, showing the reader a good attitude so far.
During the time period that the story is set in, there were many different people with titles to them; kinsman being an example. Since this is true, the story is very well related to its setting; however, the time period that it was written in was almost one hundred years after the set time period. Since this is true, many of the readers of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” believe that the relation to the time period and the story isn’t quite in correlation. However, the time period its set in does relate well to the content of the story.
At the beginning of the story, the author starts off by giving the readers a little bit of history in order to bring them into the loop of the story. Mentioning that the British governors were very unpopular in Massachusetts. There were also many governors who had this job with very bad experiences while in office. He then tells how Robin is searching for his Major, but no one seems to want to tell him where to find this man.
Soon, Robin approaches a rich man, causing a violent encounter with him, but just wanting to find out some information about where to find the Major. The searching continues, though he has little luck in finding his friend the Major Molineux. The different events that occur for Robin tend to lead towards something other of the ordinary. He meets many different people with unique stories and weird things occur, making it sound somewhat like a dream.
Though the short story was written during the 1800’s, it was based during the 1700’s, making the story a little confusing when looking at the time period and its relation to the story. However, the author did a great job at relating the story to a hundred years before he was writing, not even have lived during that time and being able to know what went on. He gave great historical information about the time period beforehand, making the time period correlate well with its set time period.
