Judge Pynchion

In the passage of Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The House of Seven Gables, Judge Pyncheon’s character is industriously planned out to reveal his inner core. Through Hawthorne’s sarcastic tone and lurid foreshadowing, Judge Pyncheon is depicted as a dark flagitious man.

Hawthorne’s narration is actively sarcastic through the first paragraph of the passage, creating a susceptible view of Judge Pyncheon. Hawthorne states that he is not “imputing crime” upon such a person of Pyncheon’s “eminent respectability,” but clearly is in fact doing so. This directly raises the question that, if Judge Pyncheon is of such noble character, why is the remote possibility of his crimes even being noted? Hawthorne’s concrete irony suggests that Judge Pyncheon is not the same person that he “beholds in the looking glass.” Hawthorne’s use of a long syntax sentences structure within the first paragraph slowly bring about this; first accounting out Judge Pyncheon’s array of “honorable” traits, then emphatically claiming that is there no room for “darker traits” in him.

Concealed are citations of his daily consumption of five glasses of wine and the casting off of his son. These cold act disguised as positive traits undermine the Judge’s character even further. Even the positive traits mentioned are done so sarcastically as Hawthorne describe the Judge’s contribution to “horticulture by producing two much-esteemed varieties of the pear.” This infer that pears are of no help to society and that two additional types of pears does not benefit anyone in any manner. Hawthorne’s deceptive description reflects onto Judge Pyncheon himself, thus swaying a tone which portrays Judge Pyncheon differently had his dark interior had been clearly stated. This characterizes him as flagitious, beguiling, and malevolent.

Much of the sarcasm from the first paragraph is a

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