How does the author address the theme of reality versus appearance in the story, The Wives of the Dead?

"The Wives of the Dead" is both a story about two widows and a meditation on the nature of reality, asking readers to question the dreamlike quality of their waking life and the reality of their dreams. Hawthorne's setting creates a world in which things are never as they appear because appearance itself rests upon the volatile emotional state of the two primary characters, through whose eyes the story is told, and upon the trustworthiness of the narrator, whose honesty is in doubt. The bulk of the events take place at night, and the narrator repeatedly emphasizes what the characters can and cannot see. In bed, Margaret, agitated and unnerved, sees the lamp throw "the shadows of the furniture up against the wall, stamping them immovably there, except when they were shaken by a sudden flicker of the flame." This image calls to mind Plato's Allegory of the Cave, a dialogue in which the Greek philosopher argues for the existence of a higher reality than the one human beings experience with their senses. Hawthorne employs other visual symbolic imagery such as the lantern, the hearth, morning mist, and windows to emphasize the relationship between truth and seeing, sight and insight. For example, after Goodman Parker reports to Margaret that her husband is still alive, the narrator says that Parker's lantern "gleamed along the street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments of a world, like order glimmering through chaos." Such a description embodies Margaret's response to the good news.