“WAKEFIELD”– DOCTOROW AND HAWTHORNE.

“WAKEFIELD”—DOCTOROW AND HAWTHORNE. The New Yorker for January 14 has a short story entitled “Wakefield” by E.L. Doctorow which is a retelling of a great story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, also called “Wakefield.” The Doctorow story is here. The Hawthorne story is here. In each story, a man named Wakefield decides on the spur of the moment to leave his wife, lives near her for an extended period of time, and then returns home. I think that Doctorow’s version reflects what we expect from a contemporary story. Hawthorne does not give us any of the following, which Doctorow gives us: Because Doctorow’s Wakefield tells the story, we learn the psychological reasons why Wakefield makes his decisions and the events which make what Wakefield does seem somewhat plausible. We learn the practicalities of Wakefield’s day-to-day existence. Finally, Doctorow, has a plot, a series of events with causal relationships between them.