Solitude and isolation are immense, powerful, and overcoming feelings. They possess the ability to destroy a person's life by overwhelming it with gloom and darkness. Isolate is defined: to place or keep by itself, separate from others (Webster 381). Solitude is "the state of being alone" (Webster 655). Nathaniel Hawthorne uses these themes of solitude and isolation for the characters in several of his works. "Hawthorne is interested only in those beings, of exceptional temperament or destiny, who are alone in the world..." (Discovering Au ....