Reviews for Gentle Boy

The average rating for Gentle Boy based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-12 00:00:00 Sean Gordon This early tale of Hawthorne's (first published in The Token, 1832) was deemed by Longfellow "the finest thing he ever wrote." I do not share Longfellow's opinion, for this long short story is too diffuse and sentimental to rank with Hawthorne's best. Nonetheless, the tale has undeniable power. There are ironies here to balance the sentimentality, and the story embodies classic Hawthornean themes. It is set in 1656, during Puritan persecution of the Quakers. Tobias, a kindly Puritan who finds the orphan Quaker Ibrahim mourning over the grave of his executed father, takes the boy home, and he and his wife Dorothy raise the boy as their own. But the other Puritans'and their children'are not kind to young Ibrahim; his life is difficult, and his naturally joyous temper tour so eventually to melancholy. Hawthorne refuses to take sides between the Quakers and the Puritans. The Quakers'at least the 17th century variety'are unbalanced in their enthusiasm, occasionally (as in the case of Ibrahim's mother Catharine) close to madness. The Puritans, on the other hand, let cold intellect not only to demarcate the limits of correct religious doctrine, but allow it also to circumscribe the limits of their compassion. Both would benefit by a union of the head with the heart. This is an affecting, inspiring tale, filled with sadness yet touched by optimism, for we see how the Puritan culture in general'and Tobias and Dorothy in particular'subtly grow in tolerance and warmth as a result of what they have done and seen.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-12 00:00:00 James Birchfield It may be the case that I am so sleep deprived that I almost felt a tear at the corner of my reddened eyes while reading this. Everyone that endeavors to read this should take heed that THIS was not written in the 21 C and so, a story in which a boy dies for the believes of his parents is not THAT questionable. (well, when I put it like that, it really seems modern-- but He was a street boy (literally) when one night he was scooped by a Protestant man that brought him home. The man and his wife adopted the child. They found out that he was a Quakers` child--in a sort of exorcist kind of revelations from his mother`s part. And then, some kind of fight ensued on: which side gets to keep the boy? And the boy dies at the end, because of course, no one is right, everything is relative, life is short.) Instagram\\my Blog\\