I think that Hawthorne’s description of Dr. Heidegger’s study describes the four friends. “It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust…” In this quote, it represents the physical characteristics of the four friends, old and wrinkled. The dark and dank atmosphere of the study reflects their depressed personalities.
I think that one of the themes found in “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment is that if a person is given a second chance at life, it is impossible for a person to change their behavior. Each of the characters all had chosen a lifestyle in their youths which each led a life of prosperity, but to loose their success and respect because of their behavior. The four friends had a life without pleasant memories to recall. They had gotten a second chance to relive life, they returned to their original faults. “Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances.” Once back to their youthful selves, the good doctor sees that their morals are still the same as before. Mr. Medbourne is still greedy. Colonel Killigrew still wants to seek the sinful pleasures he once had. Mr. Gascoigne is still lying about politics. The Widow Wycherly is still very vain and conceited. All of them laugh at the doctor since he is still old. They mock the sick, elderly, and disabled of which they had just been so themselves.
There are many ind...
In conclusion, the story describes that life changes, and nothing stays the same throughout it. It is in the hands of the people to decide that how they want their life to be. They can make it as beautiful as they want to and they can also make it worse than it has ever been
he used real life situations to relate what was happening to the reader. “It gave him,to the very depth of his kind heart ,to observe how the children fled from his approach.”(Hawthorne,Pg,109) To this day people still have to deal with situations similar to this, therefore he could relate to some of the readers. “Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape” He used an outdated style so some of the readers might not of been able to get the full picture if was trying to present.
Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Melinda are the people of the world with the feelings of deceit, despair, and dejection associated with their faults, troubles, and passion. Hawthorne and Anderson mastered in ensnaring the feelings of deceit, despair, and dejection and writing the feelings into their extraordinary characters. Both authors succeed in creating these characters in such a way that the readers will most likely meet a Hester, Arthur, Roger, or a Melinda in their lifetime.
Deadly and helpful, science is a dual-edged sword. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the first to emphasize this through his literary works. “Rappaccini's Daughter” and “The Birthmark” are two of his works where he teaches this lesson through the trials of his characters. Focusing on the motif of the “mad scientist”, Hawthorne brings to light the points that people struggle with humanity, learning to love themselves and others, and that science can be more harmful then helpful.
Fifteen years separate Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” The two share an eerie connection because of the trepidation the two protagonists endure throughout the story. The style of writing between the two is not similar because of the different literary elements they choose to exploit. Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” chronicles Ichabod Crane’s failed courtship of Katrina Van Tassel as well as his obsession over the legend of the Headless Horseman. Hawthorne’s story follows the spiritual journey of the protagonist, Young Goodman Brown, through the woods of Puritan New England where he looses his religious faith. However, Hawthorne’s work with “Young Goodman Brown” is of higher quality than Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” because Hawthorne succeeds in exploiting symbols, developing characters, and incorporating worthwhile themes.
Lang, H.J.. “How Ambiguous Is Hawthorne.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
The deep symbolism conveyed by certain aspects of nature helps the reader gain a deeper understanding of the plight and inner emotions of the characters in the novel. Hawthorne's moods or prevailing feelings during certain scenes are revealed to the reader through nature. For example, one of the first scenes in the book demonstrates this unique writing talent that Hawthorne uses to enrich his writing. He describes Hester Prynne and her child being released from the local prison into the light of day. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the vivid light of day; because its experience, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison (49).
Erikson modeled his life cycle schema after the Shakespearean play “As You Like It”. The play identifies the seven ages that men experience starting with infancy and continuing in to old age.In the play the first age is infancy which lasts until a child is old enough to go to school. The third age is when a man falls in love. Next the man becomes strong and mature like a soldier and then becomes just and wise like a judge. The sixth age is when a man reaches old age and incompetency followed by age seven which is death. Erikson believed that Shakespeare had neglected to include the play stage in his seven ages presented in the play “As You Like It”. “In the late 1940s Eriksons received an invitation to present a paper on the developmental stages of life at the midcentury White House conference on children and youth. The paper they were to contribute for the conference was on growth and crisis of the healthy personality.” (Capps, 2004) It was on the way to this conference that the Eriksons realized that if Shakespeare had left out a stage then they too may have forgotten a stage. Erik Erikson realized that his life cycle model went from intimacy, signifying young adulthood in stage six to old age in stage seven. After this realization the Eriksons added “Generativity Versus Stagnation” as the new seventh
Nathaniel Hawthorne's knowledge of Puritanism and his close relationship with the religion has impacted his views on those in the society. Hawthorne is critical of the Puritans and he thinks that they are hypocrites for having rules and morals that they do not follow. He sees the underlying sin that others may not. Through his many writings he makes known to his readers that everyone is guilty of sin. The Puritan's main goal was to save themselves from the sin in the world, but Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays their morals and society as troublesome through his works, "Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil," and The Scarlet Letter.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s narrative mode of expression has long been made distinct through his involvement apropos of Dark Romanticism and his inventive implementation of profoundly moralistic and partially pessimistic psychological observations regarding human behaviour; therefore it should be unsurprising that, in “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” Hawthorne chose to explore the significance of assuming responsibility for one’s self. “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” primarily surrounds an enigmatic, aged doctor congregating four of his decrepit friends to determine whether, when permitted a second chance atjuvenescence, his guests would repeat their mistakes. And they did.Relinquishing responsibility of their thoughts, words, and actions in response to temptations is wont of the unapologetic Colonel
Lang, H.J. “How Ambiguous is Hawthorne?” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
To begin with, the novel starts off describing a prison door that holds much Romanticism. Hawthorne describes, “Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its
When the news came of his father’s death, Hawthorne’s mother withdrew into her upstairs bedroom, coming out only rarely during the remaining forty years of her life. The boy and his two sisters lived in almost complete isolation from her and from each other (29).
Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Revised Edition. Twayne’s United States Authors Series. G.K. Hall & Company. Massachusetts. 1983.
No matter how minute or immense an object was, it is evident that in this particular story it had a profusion of importance to Hawthorne; clearly Hawthorne anticipated that each symbol would have a great impact for each reader in order for him or her to form their own conclusions of each event. Undoubtedly, through his descriptive writing Hawthorne invites the readers into his fictional world where they will unexpectedly explore multiple interpretations and possible connections among the characters and certain symbolic ambiguities waiting to be discovered within each scene.