The Story of David Swan by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Summary, Analysis

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer who was born in 1804 and died in 1864. His first short story collection was Twice Told Tales , whose first volume was published in 1837. All the stories of this collection were already published in annuals and magazines; hence, Hawthorne chose the title Twice Told Tales.’

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a romanticist whose work predominantly belongs to the genre of dark romanticism. Dark romanticism reflects an intense fascination with melancholia, insanity, crime, and a shady atmosphere, with the options of ghosts and ghouls, the grotesque, and the irrational. Italian critic Mario Praz first mentioned Dark Romanticism as a unique genre of literature in 1930. Dark romanticism focuses on human fallibility, self-destruction, judgment, and punishment, as well as the psychological effects of guilt and sin.

David Swan or The Story of David Swan is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was published in Twice Told Tales. The story depicts the binary opposite forces that govern human perception. Whether a thing is good or bad, lucky or unlucky, the story further presents a unique balance of chance and choice that carve our life. While all the good or bad chances are aware of us, we may remain ignorant about most of them while these chances continue to wait for our response, whether we do take, reject, or ignore them, let alone not notice them.
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