Guilt and horror are the primary moods the book inspires. Hawthorne invites the reader to ruminate on the sins of the characters and, to an even greater extent, the sins of capitalism and industrialization. In Chapter 11, Hawthorne sympathizes with Clifford's horror at the railroad in the distance:
Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. It can merely be a suspended animation; for, were the power actually to perish, there would be little use of immortality. We are less than ghosts, for the time being, whenever this calamity befalls us.
The railroad is a world-altering piece of technology that has sprung up during Clifford's incarceration, so it represents the way the world has moved on without him. Hawthorne starts by describing how upset Clifford becomes as he listens to the trains. In this passage, he moves to a more general reflection on the "sense of decay" anyone can feel as they realize that time is passing them by. He invites readers to dip into their own experience of feeling "less than ghosts" at moments when they have been overwhelmed by rapid change and the quick passage of time.
The helpless "sense of decay" Hawthorne invites readers to feel here is accompanied by the sense that humans have brought this fate on themselves. The book repeatedly refers to the sins of dead people and the unrelenting grip dead people have on the living. Dead people created the world Hepzibah, Clifford, Phoebe, and readers are living in; we are all now atoning for their mistakes. There is a sense that industrialization, capitalism, and progress are a train humans have set speeding along a track so fast that it cannot be stopped. The train set to flatten us all is the inheritance our ancestors have left us, so it is all we have to work with. There is thus a melancholy acceptance mixed in with the guilt and horror of the book: the reader is left understanding that their world may be cursed by a string of bad political and economic developments, but that it is theirs to inhabit for the time being.
