LIKE POE, Nathaniel Hawthorne created works of fiction with both central chiasmus and central parallelism. I have discussed elsewhere the central chiasmus of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850)—“an immense letter,—the letter A”—occurring in the central scaffold scene and framed by the first and last scaffold scenes and by abundant symmetrical language. I will consider here the framed central parallelism of his 1844 sketch “Earth's Holocaust.”

In 1839 or 1840, Hawthorne wrote in one of his notebooks, “A bonfire to be made of the gallows and of all symbols of evil” (CE 8:185). A few years later, in 1842 or 1843, he elaborated on this idea:

In late 1843 or early 1844, Hawthorne developed these ideas into a remarkable story, “Earth's Holocaust.” Imagining a modern-day “bonfire of the vanities”—that 1497 effort by Girolamo Savonarola to burn all that could lead to sin—he critiqued contemporary reform and suggested the possibility of its ultimate futility. Yet he also offered a qualified support for the destruction of the gallows. The story was published in Graham's Magazine in May 1844 and later appeared in Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846.

In this cautionary tale, people gather at a spot on the American prairie to create a huge bonfire to destroy the world's “accumulation of worn-out trumpery” (CE 10:381). The narrator, an American author—perhaps a somewhat naïve version of Hawthorne himself— attends, seeking “some profundity of moral truth” (CE 10:381). He occasionally talks with a fellow observer, “a grave man, fifty years old or thereabout” (CE 10:382). They witness the destruction of objects of heraldry, objects of royalty, as well as all the liquor in the world. The “Last Toper” (CE 10:387)—the “Last Drunkard” of Hawthorne's note—exclaims his distress but manages to steal a bottle of brandy. Coffee, tea, and tobacco are consigned to the fire, and then individuals contribute their own fuel, from a purse to pen and paper.