The Minotaur — Nathaniel Hawthorne

In "The Minotaur" Hawthorne's art of storytelling illuminates the ugliness of evil in all its unnatural and vicious forms through the image of the Minotaur, a monster part man and part bull that each year devours fourteen Athenian youth chosen by lottery as sacrificial victims to satisfy the malice of King Minos. The Minotaur hides in the center of the labyrinth that none of the victims can escape. As Ariadne warns Theseus who has come to destroy the monster, "Were we to take a few steps from the doorway, we might wander about all our lifetime, and never find it again." Evil lurks in secretive places as it lures its victims into the crooked ways of the maze.