Both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe are gothic writers who share many similarities in their stories. Both authors write about characters who live in their own and try to escape the real world around them. In Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s experiment” four participants attempt to escape reality by drinking from a fountain of youth in order to return to make themselves younger. In Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, Prince Prospero tries to escape the red death, a disease that is ravaging his city, by hiding in his own castellated abbey. The characters in the stories both attempt to avoid death and the inevitable, by hiding behind their barriers, but no matter what they try to do reality catches up to them and they succumb to what they originally try to avoid. In both stories, the protagonists hide behind barriers made by themselves, attempt to conquer death, and eventually give in to death.
In Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “Dr. Heidegger’s experiment” four participants hide behind a barrier which in this case is a fountain of youth; a concoction that makes the drinker younger. “… my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as may restore to the bloom of your youth” (Hawthorne 5). Dr. Heidegger offers the participants a drink of the magical liquid which will make them younger. The liquid serves as a barrier between the participants and death as though it protects them from the effects of aging and growing older.
When confronted by death, as the four participants were growing old and on the verge of death, they felt as though by drinking from the liquid they can conquer and defeat it. “’give us more of this wondrous water!’ cried they, eagerly” (Hawthorne 7). The participants thought that in order to conq...
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...e story is the same. The protagonists feel as though that they are above death and can defeat it with the slightest is ease. In “Dr. Heidegger’s experiment” the characters believe that simply drinking from the fountain of youth will allow them to conquer death, but it only prolongs its devastating effects. The liquid had worn off much too quickly and the characters became as old as they were when the experiment first started. In “The Masque of the Red Death” prince Prospero encounters the Red Death at his party and through his own ego chases it down until the very last room in the abbey. The prince chases the Red Death with a dagger as he believes he can overcome it, but the Red Death turns around and he and his guests drop to the floor one by one. Death is inevitable and although the characters feel as though they can defeat it, they all capitulate to its effects.
Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” both deal with the main character’s belief in being able to conquer a situation. Hawthorne’s story centers on Brown’s journey into the forest to have a meeting with an older man, which tests Brown’s faith. Poe’s story focuses on Prince Prospero’s attempt to escape the Red Death by locking himself in his castellated abbey together with friends, and hosting a masquerade ball. Essentially, both stories deal with different scenarios by Brown believing he can overcome evil, and Prince Prospero believing he can overcome death. However, despite the different circumstances, both stories have significant similarities. Both “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Masque of the Red Death”
Throughout T. C. Boyle’s work, “Greasy Lake”, a young man’s intrepid night leads him to discover how close death is to life. This realization causes a sombre awakening for the narrator as he falls in the midst of fatality; and practically becomes a casualty himself. Following each traumatic event, the narrator’s innocence disappears and morality is called into question. When death fast approaches, and the grim reaper is breathing down his neck, the narrator subsequently realizes his mistakes, but not before it’s almost too late.
During the adolescence of modern American literature, two authors, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, fabricated the definition of American literature with new writing styles. These pieces of literature include “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Masque of Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe. Throughout these stories, Hawthorne and Poe develop the common theme that denial of imperfections, by personal choice, leads to physical and psychological separation from society. Those who remain isolated will endure more psychological suffering than those who are part of society. In “Young Goodman Brown”, the protagonist, Goodman Brown, mentally isolates himself from his peers because he cannot accept that sin is an integral part of society. However, as a result of his dissociation from society and the isolation thereof, Goodman Brown endures even more emotional suffering. In “The Masque of Red Death”, the protagonist, Prince Prospero, isolates himself from society in order to escape death. Because of his isolation, he endures more mental suffering than if he remained incorporated within society.
In the short story “ The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to express ideas to develop his theme and characters. “ The Masque of the Red Death” tells a story of prince Prospero who locks his friends and himself in a castle to escape the Red Death, a deadly disease. Much to Prospero’s dismay, in the end, the deadly disease causes them to perish. Poe uses the dark room to reveal Prospero’s unusual character and reveal that death is always there and cannot be avoided.
In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” Dr. Heidegger presents a vase full of water from the fountain of youth. The water claims to keep living things healthy and young. Throughout the story, readers experience four miserably old guests drink this water and become young again. Although these guests claim feeling young and looking young, there are instances where it suggests that the elixir is fake and is just a placebo. The water from the fountain of youth is just regular water that Dr. Heidegger convinced the quests that it would make them young again. This is shown when the guests think the demonstration is a deception, when they water’s power was going to “four human beings who needed it more woefully,” and after the vase breaks and the four grow old again (Hawthorne).
In his paper “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” Bernard Williams asserts his central claim that when immortality is feasible it is intolerable; further, it is reasonable to regard death as an evil. He argues his position by utilization of The Makropulos case, or the case of E.M. This character and circumstance is derived from a play by Karel Capek. E.M. is a woman of three hundred and forty two years. She has survived so long due to an immortality draught concocted by her father, a physician, long before the play’s action. E.M. explains her problem with immortality is that her unending life has become incredibly dull, her emotions have become cold and indifferent. She feels that in the end, everything has happened before and life has become unsatisfying. She stops taking the immortality draught and death overtakes her. This invokes the optimistic thought that immortality may be rewarding, if certain desires continue to be satisfied. Williams expands on the idea of these desires, called categorical desires and inherent motivation, but first we should confirm the views of death that make the conversation of immortality desirable.
Edgar Allen Poe is famous for his gothic stories and poetries. In The Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator visits his old childhood friend, Roderick Usher. The Usher family is a noble family that is well known for their incestual behavior, which leads to multiple deformations for their offspring. The only living heirs of the Usher family are the twins, Roderick and Madeline Usher, forever chained to the decrepit house they live in with no chance of escape. In The Masque of the Red Death, a plague is reeking havoc upon the country and Prince Prospero can only do one thing: lock himself and his noble subjects in the abbey to party and not worry about death. In both of the short stories, the characters are stationed inside their house, trying to forget all miseries, but death still occupies the back of their minds. The characters within the short stories are trying to prevent death by running away, but they end up rounding the corner to meet up with Death again.
Death, despair, and revenge, these three words form a treacherous triangle to any reader who dare enter the mind of Edgar Allen Poe. In many of his works these expressions seem to form a reoccurring theme. Comparing the works "The Mask of the Red Death" and "The Cask of Amontillado", we will discuss these themes while analyzing the method behind Poe’s madness.
Death is an enigmatic phenomenon that mankind dances with. Experienced by everyone at some point or another, death weaves its way through our lives and presents to us the reality of its finality and the truth of the unknown. Consequently, death results in the natural need to mourn the loss of people passed on. For most aging adults, death becomes a more conspicuous matter to address than in earlier years. Some cope better than others with the inevitable nature of death, seeing it as the necessary conclusion to a long life, while others deny its approach and attempt to delay its occurrences as long as possible.
Edgar Allen Poe was an English short-story writer whose work reflects the traditional Gothic conventions of the time that subverted the ambivalence of the grotesque and arabesque. Through thematic conventions of the Gothic genre, literary devices and his own auteur, Edgar Allan Poe’s texts are considered sublime examples of Gothic fiction. The Gothic genre within Poe’s work such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, and The Raven, arouse the pervasive nature of the dark side of individualism and the resulting encroachment of insanity. Gothic tales are dominated by fear and terror and explore the themes of death and decay. The Gothic crosses boundaries into the realm of the unknown, arousing extremes of emotion through the catalyst of disassociation and subversion of presence. Gothic literature utilises themes of the supernatural to create a brooding setting and an atmosphere of fear.
In our lives, we go through stages of mindset and maturity that naturally coincide with aging. One thing that remains the same, though, through all of these stages, is that eventually, we die; we are completely aware of that as humans. Whether because it’s due to the painful reality that is mortality, our ever-diminishing ability to be wistful and imaginative, or merely the impending coming of the Grim Reaper, our entire lives are, ironic as it is, surrounded by and flooded with death. However, as we grow older, our perception of death changes. It goes from taboo in our young ages to something that begins to surround and eventually consume us as we grow older. Between the poems “For the Anniversary of my Death” by
During the time period of romanticism, literature usually contained grotesque and fantastical settings, plots, and characters. The short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” by Edgar Allen Poe resembles the qualities of romantic literature. Poe uses objects and settings to represent values of life and death. These representations add to the overall romantic theme of this story. Poe uses seven rooms of the main character, Prince Prospero’s, palace to represent stages in life. The last and seventh room represents death. This room “was shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls […] the panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color”(116). In this story Prince Prospero and his guests all die of the “red death” once they enter this room. The theme of this story is that no one can escape death. This is shown as Prince Prospero, a greedy and self-centered man, who tries to escape death, ironically dies as he enters the seventh room. Another element that is often found in romantic literature is the literary device, symbolism. Washington Irving, the author of the romantic folktale, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, uses symbolism to develop the plot and setting of his story. In this story, the setting is a dark and gloomy swamp with trees that symbolize lives that were once given to the devil, Old Scratch, in exchange for wealth. “Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and f...
In the story, “Masque of the Red Death” it covers six months during the Red Death.It takes place in a castle which has seven different colored rooms.In the beginning of the story it describes the main character prince Prospero as happy,fearless and wise. Towards the end of the story a new guest appears to the party and everyone is scared and Prospero goes from being happy to mad and in the end the new guest kills Prospero and everyone dies because he was the Red Death. The message in this analogy ,”The Masque of the Red Death “ by Poe is life passes by so quick that you don't realize what's going on until it's your time to die.
These two thought provoking stories take widely separate approaches on the idea of death. One being
Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as an influential author to the genre of horror and gothic tales that suggest what is out there (Van Leer back cover). Poe is best known for his dark and gruesome images, centered on death in order to provide his readers a sense of terror within oneself by showcasing what one is capable of doing (Giammarco 5). These qualities are contributed in Poe’s short stories such as, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, ‘The Man of the Crowd’ and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ as they all depict various characteristics of different individuals placed in society through the device of the narrator. Poe has faced many challenges in his life from an early age including loss, illness, a difficult upbringing and heavy gambling and drinking problems (Giammarco 4). Although, these tragic events helped Poe to become one of the most well known American Poets of the 19th century (Giammarco 6).