After Robin fails to secure directions to Molineux’s house, the horned man he previously met at the inn tells him that Major Molineux will soon pass by on the street. While he waits, Robin looks through the windows of a church and sees a single ray of light illuminating a Bible. He thinks of his family and goes into a reverie as his imagination floats between “fancy and reality.” As his homesickness threatens to overwhelm him, he stumbles upon the only kind person he has spoken to so far, “a gentleman in his prime, of open, intelligent, cheerful, and altogether prepossessing countenance.” This unnamed gentleman, the counterpart to the horned man, is a reminder of the decency, sympathy, and nobility that still exists even at the center of an evil or indifferent populace.
The kind gentleman offers aid to the disheartened Robin as he sits outside of a church, making him a saintly figure that appears in the midst of profound distress. Robin relates the story of how he came from the country to Massachusetts for the gentleman, who listens eagerly and compliments Robin on his “shrewdness.” The gentleman mentions that the name of Molineux is not unfamiliar to him, the only person so far who has credibly admitted to knowing of the Major. He seems to know more than he says, as he ensures that Robin remain outside the church as Molineux and his tormentors pass by. As all the wicked and cold-hearted individuals Robin has met pass by, the gentleman alone remains by Robin’s side in his time of need. This simple goodness is a buffer against the unkindness that has greeted Robin thus far in Massachusetts.
The kind gentleman seems to have an unspecified relationship with the horned man, further proof of the subtle contest between good and evil vying for power in Massachusetts Bay. The gentleman mysteriously tells Robin that he knows the man, but “not intimately.” This implies that the kind gentleman as somewhat of a Christ figure, and the horned man as his devilish counterpart, and suggests an unspoken rivalry between the two men—one kind and curious, the other disinterested and crude. In discussing the horned man, whose face is inexplicably painted red and black, and the coming crowd, the gentleman asks Robin if a man cannot have several voices “as well as two complexions?” This can be read as an indication that the colony is halfway between good and evil and this same question lies at the heart of humanity, which is capable of both. All people must choose between the forces of individual order and the temptation represented by the horned man, who leads the townspeople into a frenzy. Seized momentarily by the festivity of the crowd, Robin loses himself and briefly partakes of the mob’s “contagion” as it spreads across the multitude. The gentleman brings Robin back to reality and asks him if he is dreaming. With this, the good man rescues Robin from being swept in by the evil power that has apparently taken control of the town. Hence the goodness seems to dispel the evil that has gripped Robin’s soul.
The ambiguous ending sees the kindly gentleman tell Robin, who asks for directions back to the ferry, that given a few days, he “may rise in the world without the help of [his] kinsman, Major Molineux.” Even a town beset by evil may be overshadowed by goodness. It is unknown by what means Robin, according to the gentleman, will “rise in the world.” But by promoting self-reliance and imploring Robin to have faith in himself, the stranger becomes the boy’s savior. That said, there is the possibility that the stranger means to induct Robin into some dishonest labor. From the story, it is impossible to know, but as Robin has come to distrust everything around him, even kindness feels conditional and potentially criminal. The gentleman is different from every other person Robin has met and seems almost otherworldly, an indication that he is a Christ figure in opposition to the devil that leads the mob. As such, he is goodness incarnate and Robin’s salvation.
Hawthorne’s view of evil, on display in this story, is that it is bred by the masses and thrives on duplicity. Good is always an individual choice and must take root even amidst collective sinfulness. Readers don’t know in what direction Robin’s fate will take him, but he is warned not to submit altogether to the wickedness that he finds in every corner of his search for his kinsman. Through the story, Hawthorne suggests that people are not born to either total goodness or evil but arrive halfway between the two. Evil can be grotesque, as with the horned man, or spread by more subtle means until it seems to smother the possibility for good; but there always exists the hope of persevering and taking a personal stand against widespread iniquity.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Good vs. Evil Quotes in My Kinsman, Major Molineux
A number of persons, the larger part of whom appeared to be mariners, or in some way connected with the sea, occupied the wooden benches, or leather-bottomed chairs, conversing on various matters, and occasionally lending their attention to some topic of general interest. Three or four little groups were draining as many bowls of punch, which the great West India trade had long since made a familiar drink in the colony. Others, who had the aspect of men who lived by regular and laborious handicraft, preferred the insulated bliss of an unshared potation, and became more taciturn under its influence. Nearly all, in short, evinced a predilection for the Good Creature in some of its various shapes, for this is a vice, to which, as the Fast-day sermons of a hundred years ago will testify, we have a long hereditary claim.
“What have we here?’ said he, breaking his speech into little dry fragments. ‘Left the house of the subscriber, bounden servant, Hezekiah Mudge—had on, when he went away, grey coat, leather breeches, master’s third best hat. One-pound currency reward to whoever shall lodge him in any jail in the province.” Better trudge, boy, better trudge!”
Robin had begun to draw his hand towards the lighter end of the oak cudgel, but a strange hostility in every countenance, induced him to relinquish his purpose of breaking the courteous innkeeper’s head. As he turned to leave the room, he encountered a sneering glance from the bold-featured personage whom he had before noticed; and no sooner was he beyond the door, than he heard a general laugh, in which the innkeeper’s voice might be distinguished, like the dropping of small stones into a kettle.
“Nay, the Major has been a-bed this hour or more,” said the lady of the scarlet petticoat; “and it would be to little purpose to disturb him to-night, seeing his evening draught was of the strongest. But he is a kind-hearted man, and it would be as much as my life’s worth, to let a kinsman of his turn away from the door. You are the good old gentleman’s very picture, and I could swear that was his rainy-weather hat. Also, he has garments very much resembling those leather—But come in, I pray, for I bid you hearty welcome in his name.”
Robin gazed with dismay and astonishment, on the unprecedented physiognomy of the speaker. The forehead with its double prominence, the broad-hooked nose, the shaggy eyebrows, and fiery eyes, were those which he had noticed at the inn, but the man’s complexion had undergone a singular, or, more properly, a two-fold change. One side of the face blazed of an intense red, while the other was black as midnight, the division line being in the broad bridge of the nose; and a mouth, which seemed to extend from ear to ear, was black or red, in contrast to the color of the cheek. The effect was as if two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage.
A fainter, yet more awful radiance, was hovering round the pulpit, and one solitary ray had dared to rest upon the opened page of the great Bible. Had Nature, in that deep hour, become a worshipper in the house, which man had builded? Or was that heavenly light the visible sanctity of the place, visible because no earthly and impure feet were within the walls? The scene made Robin’s heart shiver with a sensation of loneliness, stronger than he had ever felt in the remotest depths of his native woods; so he turned away, and sat down again before the door.
“Well, Sir, being nearly eighteen years old, and well-grown, as you see,’ continued Robin, raising himself to his full height, ‘I thought it high time to begin the world. So my mother and sister put me in handsome trim, and my father gave me half the remnant of his last year’s salary, and five days ago I started for this place, to pay the Major a visit. But would you believe it, Sir? I crossed the ferry a little after dusk, and have yet found nobody that would show me the way to his dwelling; only an hour or two since, I was told to wait here, and Major Molineux would pass by.”
The single horseman, clad in a military dress, and bearing a drawn sword, rode onward as the leader, and, by his fierce and variegated countenance, appeared like war personified; the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword; the blackness of the other betokened the mourning which attends them. In his train, were wild figures in the Indian dress, and many fantastic shapes without a model, giving the whole march a visionary air, as if a dream had broken forth from some feverish brain, and were sweeping visibly through the midnight streets.
Right before Robin’s eyes was an uncovered cart. There the torches blazed the brightest, there the moon shone out like day, and there, in tar-and-feathery dignity, sat his kinsman, Major Molineux!
He was an elderly man, of large and majestic person, and strong, square features, betokening a steady soul; but steady as it was, his enemies had found the means to shake it. His face was pale as death, and far more ghastly; the broad forehead was contracted in his agony, so that his eyebrows formed one grizzled line; his eyes were red and wild, and the foam hung white upon his quivering lip.
