The Hollow of the Three Hills
Short story by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Hollow of the Three Hills" is a story published in 1830 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his first published short story.
The story is about a young woman who asks a fortune teller for information about the fate of her family. During their evening meeting in a hollow in the forest, the fortune teller (whether she is a witch remains unclear) conjures up three apparitions that reveal the young woman's sins and their consequences: She has abandoned her family, her parents are embittered, her husband is in an insane asylum, her child is dead. This early story already shows many of Hawthorne's typical stylistic characteristics and subjects - complex symbolism, enigmatic ambiguity, dark atmosphere, questions about the nature of sin, guilt, punishment and despair - which make him an outstanding representative of "dark" American Romanticism alongside Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville.