Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man who personified a literary battle between good and evil, had an ambiguous and unique writing style that was greatly advanced for his time. Although literary works such as, The Scarlet Letter, Young Goodman Brown, and The House of Seven Gabels, have apparent themes showing Nathaniel Hawthorne's obsession with ancestral secret, guilt, and sin, perhaps the greatest ambiguities of Hawthorne literary career are the factors that fueled his writing style. Numerous readers and critics have developed theories on the events that compelled Hawthorne's writing style ranging from ancestral guilt to family abuse