“The Christmas Banquet” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story published in 1844 in the American magazine Magazine and Democratic Review. It is a reworking of an earlier unpublished story “Allegories of the Heart,” which also featured the character Elliston. The story revolves around Elliston, a wealthy man who is suffering from a lack of human connection and emotion. He decides to write a story about a feast that is funded by a misanthropic old man, where the ten most unhappy people are invited to celebrate the holiday together. This story is meant to illustrate the plight of those who have no connection to their lives and feel nothing.
Аудиокнига «The Christmas Banquet» написана автором Натаниель Готорн в году.
Минимальный возраст читателя: 16
Язык: Английский
Описание книги от Натаниель Готорн
"First published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XIV (January, 1844), “The Christmas Banquet” shares its subtitle—”from the unpublished “Allegories of the Heart”—with “Egotism; or the Bosom-Serpent,” another Hawthorne story of the period. “The Christmas Banquet” is an allegory composed by Elliston and read aloud to his wife Rosina (and an old friend) after their reunion. The allegory presents the plight of the most unfortunate of men—more unfortunate even than the man with a bosom-serpent—the man who has no human connection to his own life, the man who can feel nothing at all. The Christmas Banquet mentioned in the title is an annual feast, funded by an old misanthrope, in which the ten most miserable people who can be found are gathered together for the holiday. Year after year, the most unfortunate ones gather—a suffer from constant depression, a victim of heart disease, a hypochondriac, a woman whose children has died when she was far from home, etc.—to vie for the banquet prize: a wreath for the most miserable one of all. Each year the guests chosen are different, but Gervaise Hastings, a man unafflicted by any obvious misfortune, is included year after year. "
