Crazyworld
don't really understand the structure of this sentence. This long connection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him.
Apr 18, 2015 10:34 AM
Answers · 4
1
I find from Googling that this is from Nathaniel Hawthorne's long introduction to "The Scarlet Letter," written in the 1800s, in language that is somewhat formal and old-fashioned by today's standards. Hawthorne writes long, complex, "literary" sentences. It is talking about the old established families in Salem, Massachusetts and their feelings about the town. The previous sentence is talking about how, typically, "a boy" in Salem might grow up. The pronoun "him" in this sentence refers to "boy" in the previous sentence. "Kindred" is an unusual usage here--I didn't realize it could be used that way until I looked it up. "Kindred" means blood connection, of the same family, related. It is being used in an evocative way to describe "a kindred" between people and a place. The skeleton of the sentence is "this connection creates a kindred." The connection... between a family and a place where it has lived a long time... creates... an association so strong that it is almost as if the place itself were part of the family. The rest of the sentence adds on to what is already there. The sentence means that if a family has lived in one place for a long time, the people in the family come to love it, in the same way that they might love a member of the family. You love family members because they are family "quite independent" of whether they are wonderful people. If a family lives in one place for many generations, people come to love it just because it is where the family has lived, "quite independent" of its charm. I'm not quite sure what to make of "moral circumstances that surround him." The novel plays on the themes of family guilt, and Nathaniel Hawthorne himself was personally troubled by the role his ancestor, John Hathorne, in the terribly unjust Salem witch trials.
April 18, 2015
It's an advanced sentence. What is your level of English?
April 18, 2015
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