Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe
“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.” Socrates one of the greek philosophers in the 400’s BC, gives a reasonable question about the fear of death. Death affects people and characters very differently in life. In the world of literary works two very well known authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe present two works that both deal with the effects of this very thing the fear of death. Laid out in the next few pages we shall see that there are many connections to the works these two have done in the way that their characters are affected by the fear of death, how this is shaped by the authors life, and the way that their situations and fear of death affect the rest of their lives.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe were both american authors from the eighteen hundreds. Both were part of the romantic movement the two works that we are going to look at are considered part of the dark romanticism genre. The first work we are going to look at is “Young Goodman Brown” that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in 1835 and the other one is “The Fall of The House of Usher” that Edger Allen Poe wrote in 1839. The works depict the main character on a journey. They also share that the settings are dark or even that there is a persistent evil in the time frame. Have a feeling of death or dread that something is going wrong and that the place they are could hold something very supernatural that could affect the characters in a life altering way.
A summary of “Young goo...
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...s Young Goodman Brown." Explicator 65.3 (2007): 143-145. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
Predmore, Richard. "'YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN' Night Journey Into The Forest." Journal Of Analytical Psychology 22.3 (1977): 250-257. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
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Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, were two authors who became well know for when it came to writing Gothic Literature. Both Nathaniel and Edgar knew exactly what they wanted and succeeded in taking you places you didn’t think your mind could go. They each had their own way of producing Gothic stories, but yet, can still show you what happens behind closed doors that we usually keep doubled-locked.
Hawthorne and Poe showcase a theme of darkness but differ in their approach to the setting. In Young Goodman Brown, the story primarily
Mikosh, Bert A. "The Allegorical Goodman Brown." An American Literature Survey Site. September 1996. < (31 March 1999)
Jewett, Sarah Orne. "A White Heron." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. 131-139.
Throughout our history, we have repeatedly tried to exploit the environment (i.e. nature) in order to perfect our lives. We not only manipulated the materialistic and economic aspect of our world, but we have also struggled to use the moral and the spiritual in making progress within ourselves. Instead of relying on ourselves to accomplish this purpose, we have unfortunately sought help from society's traditional institutions. These institutions, in turn, have tired to manipulate us for their own good, resulting in more harm than help. During the nineteenth century, authors such as Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne recognized this and have tried to stop it through their writings. To this end, they have adopted Ralph Waldo Emerson's view that people choose to deny the power of reason, or their own mind. He believed that until people choose to see the "light" of reason, they will remain morally dead. With the achievement of reason, external institutions will remain useless and they will understand that the spirit they so vehemently desired is indeed within them and will without a doubt eliminate their moral darkness. Therefore, Emerson affirmed that the only eternal law is that of experience and that "the one thing in the world of value is the active soul-the soul, free, sovereign, active." This essay will discuss how these authors (Melville, Hawthorne, and Dickinson) composed writings that mimicked Emerson's view of life to accentuate individualism against subjugation.
... A writing genre whose existence is based on a reaction against another genre partly owes its existence, a priori, to the original genre. And the primary transcendental motif of the primacy of spirituality over flesh is an understated plot device in Poe's story. Though clearly featuring Poe's scorn towards several defining facets of the transcendental movement, “The Fall of the House of Usher” simultaneously bears the mark of one of the most overarching themes of transcendental thinking.
According to Ernest Becker, “The main thesis of this book is that it explains: the idea of death, the fear of death that haunts humans like nothing else; the mainspring of human activity designed to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man” (“Becker” ix). The author of this book describes and quotes many other psychological thinkers views on the different kinds of fear and what contributes to the fear of death in man. The author explores several topics like self-worth, heroism, fear, anxiety, depression and many other issues throughout this book.
Fear of the unknown, and fear of what is to come in our lives, has generations of people wondering what will our lives be like tomorrow or the next day. Death is always there and we cannot escape it. Death is a scary thing. Our own mortality or the mortality of our loved ones scares us to the point that we sometimes cannot control how we are dealing with such a thing as the thought of death. Why do we fear such a thing as death? We don’t know what happens after we don’t how it feels. The fear of death is different for most but it is most certain to come and we cannot hide from it. For death is just around the corner and maybe it’s will come tomorrow or the next day! We fear not death, but the unknown that comes from death, that is the
Hawthorn, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown" The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. I. Shorter Seventh Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2008. 620-629. Print.
The similarities and differences between Poe and Hawthorne both show a dynamic and intriguing method that has lasted through the times. They both show an inner personal look through their writing about their loved ones. The dynamic writing between both writers depict the idea that no matter how morbid the writing love can shine through any view. With both writers there is a vision of morbid curiosity along with a romantic nature for the audience; by depicting death of a loved one to show a sense of connection with the audience. Although both are gothic romantic writers you can easily see that both have a different sense of life and death, and to which one holds more value.
Out of all the great authors and poets we have studied this semester I have chosen the three that I personally enjoyed reading the most; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and Walt Whitman. These three Writers stand out above the rest for each has contributed substantially to bringing forth a newly earned respect for American Writers of Literature. Up until this point in time most literature had come from European writers. Hawthorne, Poe and Whitman brought not only great works of art to our newly formed nation, but also to the world in general.
When a writer starts his work, most often than not, they think of ways they can catch their reader’s attention, but more importantly, how to awake emotions within them. They want to stand out from the rest and to do so, they must swim against the social trend that marks a specific society. That will make them significant; the way they write, how they make a reader feel, the specific way they write, and the devotion they have for their work. Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgard Allan Poe influenced significantly the American literary canon with their styles, themes, and forms, making them three important writers in America.
The misshapen, the ominous, and the gruesome; these are all words from the fascinating movement of Dark Romanticism which took place from 1828-1865. This movement embraced all of these irrational elements and shaped them into the most popular sub-genre of American literature. Life to the Dark Romantics was colorful, impulsive, and paradoxical. Unlike the Romantics, the Dark Romantics set their stories based on the wickedness of man and the repulsion of evil. The dark romantics believed that humans were equally capable of good or evil. While the Romantic’s tried to ignore the wickedness and immorality actions of man, the dark Romantics decided to remind people of the evil doings of man. Like the Romantics and Transcendentalists; however, the Dark Romantics valued instinct and feelings over judgment and rationale and saw symbols and signs in nature and everyday events. They also paid attention to the mysteries of life that were impossible to explain by reasoning. Although they did focus on the morbid and the dreadful, they were not cynical. Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were both associated with this movement and were both key figures in it.
Intro : Introduce the concept of death, and how the concept of death is shown to be something to be feared