The Ambitious Guest

The ambitions the story’s characters express nearly all reflect a desire to transcend death. The characters are not unaware of their mortality—the setting alone makes death an ever-present possibility—but if they do not express a desire for literal immortality, they nevertheless seek figurative ways to survive their deaths. The guest is the prime example: “He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not be forgotten in the grave” (301). He later speaks of his desire for a “monument” that will preserve his memory—a way of overcoming the barriers of death and becoming immortal. He even states that he “cannot die till” he has achieved his dreams (302), as though holding death off were in his power. The father also expresses his desire to be remembered. He notes that he wants a headstone documenting his name and age and letting people know that he was a devout man. The grandmother’s ambitions are most telling of all. As she herself notes, her age means that thoughts of death are never far from her: “Now what should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her grave” (305). Nevertheless, she too tries to meet death on her own terms. She has already selected the clothes she wants to be buried in, and she now tells her family that she would like someone to hold a mirror up to her before burial to ensure she likes what she sees. This, she believes, will ensure that her body is not restless in death.

However, death has its own time and does not respond to human desire, as all the characters learn by the end of the story. None of them get the death they had desired, and while the tragedy of the landslide does ensure the family’s preservation in legend, their “monument” recalls their deaths rather than their lives and therefore does not immortalize them in the sense that they desired. Ultimately, the story warns against seeking such “Earthly Immortality.” Life is ephemeral by nature, Hawthorne suggests, but people too often fail to fully accept this fact. They are “ambitious guests”—temporary residents who think and act as though they were permanent ones.

The story provides a hint of consolation to offset this harsh reality when it describes the feelings developing between the guest and the eldest daughter: “Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth” (304). The passage relies on the traditional Christian notion that while earthly life is transient, the human soul is not; what’s more, what awaits people after death is a much fuller form of existence, making attempts to attain immortality on earth not only futile but also wrongheaded. However, the phrasing is tentative, relying on “perhaps” and “might,” and the story as a whole does not seek to mitigate the darkness of the characters’ fate. In the final lines, Hawthorne cautions against the arrogance of believing that one can conquer death merely to avoid the “agony” of realizing that one cannot.