I remember reading Hawthorne on my front proch as a young lad, the images he painted with words remeinded me of the Witnesses.... Not only his more popular stuff but his short stories, like "Young Goodman Brown" and the like. I remember one of the last passages in that story where it spoke of small graves dug silently-only the mother to witness the funeral, I think he was saying that the fornicator/adulter was hiding a pregancy rather than allow others to find out the "indescretion".
After I graduated from UGA, I went to work for a firm in Stoughton, Mass. and I finally got to see Salam for the first time, actually touring the house of seven gables. I also went to Concord and toured the graves on "writers bluff" which included Hawthorne and many others.
I always knew that people hadn't cahnged and Hawthorne really brought this to my attention as much of his writings focused on hypocrisy.
DId you guys/gals have a favorite writer that made you think of similaries between the witnesses and other groups?