1-2). The sun does not penetrate through the limbs of the tree over their head, and the tree stands as a connection between the earth and the heaven, between the leaves and the granite headstone above.

             Young-hee (2006) says of the story,.

             A multi-faceted story, it has been largely interpreted as a psychological and moral study in subjective guilt, Hawthorne's Calvinistic psychology, and a representation of various Biblical parables, even his anticipation of Freudian concepts of repression and the Oedipus complex, and the loss-of-innocence motif, a historical tale of an Indian fighter, and what not. Lately, the story has been read as the one that has "ecological thrust" or some biographical basis for Hawthorne's repeatedly ambivalent treatment of older men (Young-hee, 2006, para. 7).

             Many of the biblical elements are detailed by Thompson (1962, pp. 92-96). Young-hee relates such imagery to the overarching image of the wilderness, beginning in the first paragraph and extending throughout the story. Hawthorne lnks the two ideas , and throughout the story "details of Hawthorne'e setting are largely divided between these two concepts of the American wilderness, with the darker aspects predominating but the lighter ones by no means slighted" (Young-hee, 2006, para. 36).

             One anonymous commentator notes the importance of certain symbols as representing Puritanism and its ideals. He refers first to the young oak sapling that Reuben binds his handkerchief to and says it is indicative of Puritan principle and signifies a new beginning for Reuben, representing his introduction to a new life, even if that is a life "led miserably under the curse of a cowardly lie (Symbolism in Roger Malvin's Burial, 2006). After the loss of Reuben's son, the sapling cracks from the matured oak and falls to the ground, signifying the atonement for Reuben's sin, and showing that Puritan thinking would attach symbolic meaning to the occurrence: "Before the death of Roger Malvin, Reuben himself, was green and lovely.