The Ambitious Guest

The Ambitious guest is a story about a young traveler who stops for the night and spends some time with a family that lived next to a mountain. As he gets talking with the family, he expresses his...

The theme of "The Ambitious Guest" is the universality of human ambitions and the vanity of these human ambitions. The young guest is filled with ambition even though he has no idea of what he...

The main character in the story "The Ambitious Guest" is a young traveler who stops to visit with a close family who lives in an isolated but cozy cabin "in the Notch of the White Hills", located...

It is ironic that the young guest is sharing his ambitions with the family when fate has brought him to this precise location at a time when the mountain is going to give way. They dwelt in a cold...

"The Ambitious Guest" was one of four stories Hawthorne set in the rugged White Mountains of New Hampshire. The others were "The Great Carbuncle," "Sketches from Memory," and "The Great Stone...

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest" is set in a cottage in the Notch of the White Hills, high above the valley of the Saco. The area in which the cottage is nestled is described as a "great...

At the end of the story a large portion of the mountain is going to collapse on the Notch in the White Hills where the family is living, killing all of them, including the enthusiastic young guest...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Ambitious Guest," the characters who live at the cottage all appear to be content with their lives at the beginning of the story. For the most part, the...

The fact that the family lives in a very precarious place - next to a mountain where there have been many landslides and that a slide can occur at any moment -- is significant in this story because...

Interestingly, Hawthorne molds his characters of "The Ambitious Guest" quaintly, yet convincingly to his theme of the unexpectedness of death. In fact, some of them even speak of the mortality of...

Most of the details in Hawthorne's stories have symbolic significance, and "The Ambitious Guest" is no exception. Here are some of the symbols in Hawthorne's narrative: the cottage - Symbolic of...

The themes examined in Hawthorne's short story "The Ambitious Guest" concern ambition, legacy, and fate. When the guest arrives, he interrupts the family's peaceful evening by speaking about...

While the basic setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest" is, indeed, a notch in the White Hills of Massachusetts, there is much more to say in order to truly comprehend the setting...

Edgar Allan Poe published a famous "Review of Twice-Told Tales" in Graham's Magazine in May 1842. He praised Hawthorne and called him "a man of the truest genius." At the same time, Poe pointed out...

Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest" is a parable. The intention is to show that no one can know what life holds in store for him. The story resembles Tolstoy's "What Men Live By" to some extent. In...

In "The Ambitious Guest," the stranger divulges his hopes and dreams. Up until this point, he has lived a life of honesty but of no great significance. He wants his life to be uncommon. He is...

It is often said that there are three main conflicts in drama. They are man against man, man against nature, and man against himself. In most stories, plays, and motion pictures it is usually easy...

The first section of the story takes special care to inform the reader that the family in question is one of the most kindhearted imaginable. In their comfortable house on the steep side of the...

As one critic writes of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest," In his mind, the short story itself becomes the synecdoche of human fate. With masterful irony, Hawthorne creates a fable in...

The story is entitled The Ambitious Guest, because the main theme of the work is ambition."The title of the story focuses on the disturbing element: ambition. The guest's ambition is equated...

The house and family are symbolic of the fragility of human life and aspirations. The family lives in a place called the Notch, between high and rocky mountains that often drop rocks down the...

The story is told from a third person omniscient point of view. Readers are told what happens, but also what is happening in each person's mind and heart, and even invited to reflect on the meaning...

In "The Ambitious Guest," the climax, or the point of highest emotion, occurs some time after a young man appears at the door of the family who dwell in a cottage which is towered over by a...

Symbolic significance is found in most of the details of Hawthorne's stories. "The Ambitious Guest" exemplifies this technique of Hawthorne's, along with the irony that pervades the entire tone of...

Though the stark New England setting is typical of Hawthorne's stories, the overall theme of "The Ambitious Guest" is somewhat unusual for him, focusing as it does on man's impotence in the face of...

There are only sketchy descriptions of the family that lives in the cottage where the "ambitious guest" stops. There is the father, who owns "a primitive tavern." After listening to the...

The young guest is described as a "wayfarer." This is an interesting word, although it has virtually gone out of use. A wayfarer is a person who travels on foot, and this is usually because he...

Conflict: Security vs. UnknownConflict: Complacency vs. AmbitionConflict: Fate vs. Choice The cottage itself poses a conflict, it represents security vs. the unknown. The family is never quite sure...

The guest's dream is ironic because he states that he does not want to die until he builds his monument. Little does he know that he will soon die, and it is precisely a monument that is built as a...

Note the differences between the stranger and the family. The dichotomy is that the stranger is alone and seeks ambition above all else. The family is together and although they entertain the...

"The Ambitious Guest" is a short story illustrative of the power of one day's time; it is also illustrative of Hawthorne's search for the truth of the human heart. 1. A stranger happens upon the...

Hawthorne's story is a parable, like those told by Jesus in the New Testament. The easiest way to explain the theme of "The Ambitious Guest" is by quoting from the great German philosopher Arthur...

With quaint simplicity Hawthorne molds his characters to his themes, and in "The Ambitious Guest" this craft of Hawthorne is evinced in the characterization of the family members who welcome the...

In "The Ambitious Guest" the family shown living in the isolated house is a picture of happiness: a mother and father, young girl and small child, and elderly grandmother. It's meant as a...

It is important to note the way that Hawthorne deliberately presents the family in this excellent story as being very happy and contented together, in spite of the storm outside and the threatening...

The first thing to note about the guest is the obvious trait that he is ambitious. When he arrives at the house, he is weary but is immediately brightened by the warm response he gets from the...

As a Dark Romanticist, Nathaniel Hawthorne perceived a dark side to Nature and humans, both. Thus, his view of the world was in opposition to the optimistic one of the Romantics and...

This story is a fable about the purpose of life, the vanity of earthly greatness, ambition, pride. The guest has lofty ambitions for his life, not because he wants to improve mankind, but because...

There is an excellent analysis of this short story here on eNotes that can help you with this assignment. When you read the overview of the story, you will see that the family and the guest are...

"The Ambitious Guest" is an allegory,(n)a short moral story (often with animal characters), where Hawthorne suggests that once the simple family is overtaken by ambition and lose all that...

The "Ambitious Guest" is a story about a content family living in a dangerous rocky location, called The Notch. A young man, the ambitious guest, happens by and the family invites him...

Hawthorne's story's purpose is to show the futility of ambition. The ambitious guest who arrives as the cottage plans to leave his mark on the world so that he will be remembered after he has died....

The plot revolves around a family living in a cottage which occupies a dangerous position at the base of an unstable mountain. They feel very secure in their home, sitting by the fire, having...

The guest, as described by the author, is "of a proud, yet gentle spirit--haughty and reserved among the rich and great; but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like a...

This story begins by describing a cosy domestic scene of a family inside their warm and snug house whilst a storm rages outside. A contrast is made through the safety and protection that the family...

"The Ambitious Guest" is a story that turns on a cruel irony, by which its characters, in trying to escape to safety, end up fleeing safety and going to their deaths. With that in mind, Hawthorne...

The turning point or climax in "The Ambitious Guest" is when the family flees the cottage. Leading up to this point is the rising action, which includes the guest's conversations with...

The family dwells in the Notch of the White Hills, which Hawthorne calls "the bleakest spot of all New England." Their home also serves as an inn. It was one of those primitive taverns where the...

In all his works, Nathaniel Hawthorne made his chief concern not the outer appearances of things but their essential or inner truth;moreover, he cared chiefly for the truth of the human heart. In...

"Wo for the high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his death and...