In “The Maypole of Merry Mount” Hawthorne takes the historical controversy told in competing versions by Bradford and Morton and turns it into literature. He does this in a number of ways, perhaps most significantly by creating and emphasizing the young couple’s marriage: an element found in neither account. He takes a battle over competing visions of what makes an ideal society and turns it into a statement about what marriage means, and how it changes the people who enter into it. Discuss how Hawthorne changes the history, and what he seems to be saying about love in this story. You might also think about whose side he comes down on, the Puritans, or the revelers of Merry Mount.