Review of “The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Halloween Countdown

This is the first of what I thirty-one reviews of horror/ghost short stories I have planned for October as a Halloween countdown. Enjoy and wish me luck.

1) “The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A family runs an inn in a remote area of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They are happy. Because their cottage sits on the road between Maine on the one side and the Green Mountains and the St. Lawrence on the other, they receive a lot of traffic. The stagecoach always stops by their door, bringing news and company.

Danger lurks by their home as well; steep mountains tower over their cottage. They often hear rockslides, startling them in the night.

One night a stranger, a young man (who is never named), arrives on foot. The family makes him welcome. He feels at ease, almost as if he were family, and tells them he is on his way to Burlington, Vermont, and beyond.

After dinner, the young man starts talking about his future. He has yet to achieve anything, but he has plans. He tells the family, “But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my monument!”

There’d be no story if it worked out that way, would there?

Thoughts:

Hawthorne uses the expected florid nineteenth-century prose to tell his tale, all the stuff that made The Scarlett Letter such a slog in high school. This sad little yarn starts in a remote but happy place. The young man is at first downcast but warms to the happy family. He acknowledges his long road ahead—both the literal and the metaphorical ones—but sees this as a challenge, not a burden. Hawthorne even hints that love might spark between the visitor and the family’s seventeen-year-old daughter.

The reader sympathizes with the family and their guest, who are all good—if perhaps naïve—people. They’ve planned but cannot see all possibilities. Nature has the last word, and nature is as cruel as it is indifferent.

Hawthorne based “The Ambitious Guest” on a real-life disaster, the 1826 Willey Tragedy (The Willey Family Tragedy | Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) (outdoors.org)), in which seven members of the Willey family plus two hired hands lost their lives following flooding and an avalanche.

This short read is easily finished in one sitting. My experience was not so much of horror but simple sadness.

“The Ambitious Guest” was collected in Hawthorne’s work, Twice-Told Tales.

The story can be read here. (The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne)

YouTube: The Ambitious Guest – Nathaniel Hawthorne (audiobook) – YouTube

Librivox: Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864): The Ambitious Guest on Apple Podcasts


Bio: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American fiction writer whose Romantic-era short stories and novels center on themes of morality and the sinful nature of humans. He was born in New England, and some of his Puritan ancestors took part in persecuting accused witches during the Salem witch trials. In his 20s, he added a “w” to his surname to distance himself from them.

He was a friend of Franklin Pierce, who later became the fourteenth president. In college, he met poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge. After meeting Hawthorne, author Herman Melville dedicated Moby Dick to him.

Among Hawthorne’s writing are: The Scalet Letter (as anyone who went to high school in the United States knows), Twice-Told Tales, The House of the Seven Gables, and Tanglewood Tales.


Title: “The Ambitious Guest”
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
First published: New England Magazine, June 1835