Preview

The Dark and Twisted "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
630 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Dark and Twisted "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Flowers are thought to be beautiful and breathtaking, but Rappaccini's garden is something deadly and evil. It's certainly breathtaking, but while one is there, it may be the last breath taken. Rappaccini (antagonist) was a fine scientist, but just like it's said in the story, "he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind" (5). The conflict is, why would such a wonderful scientist forget about his whole career to attend to his beloved garden? Why would he make his beautiful daughter Beatrice (protagonist) immune to the poison and make it impossible to be in love with Giovanni (the young student living in the old edifice)? The twisted and dark story of "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne definitely covers almost every aspect of Dark Romanticism. These are all examples of negative imagery, gothic elements, and harmful nature relations shown throughout the story and how Dark Romanticism is very much present.

"Rappaccini's Daughter," uses a great number of negative imagery. I found over 13 of them. In the story it is said that as Rappaccini was in his garden he was "...emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking" (2). Emaciated means to be very thin especially from disease, hunger or cold. This is negative imagery because it describes Rappaccini in a horrible way. Also, in the story, it describes his garden as something "...ugly and monstrous" (6). This is negative in a sense that it shows that his garden is not only dark and twisted but at the same time he is also. These were only a few of the examples of negative imagery used in the story.

Dark Romanticism has a lot to do with gothic elements. In "Rappaccini's Daughter," it demonstrates many examples of Gothicism. Gothic means something very mysterious, and desolate. An example from the story is, "It is said that he distils these plants into medicines that are a potent as a charm" (1). Anything that is made into a so called "charm" especially plants, is very strange. Also, in the story it's quoted

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Gothic Romance “The Rappaccini's Daughter and Edgar Allan Poe. Romanticism a belief in the natural world, truth was accompanied the powerful emotion, with the natural world.…

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    attempting to make Giovanni immune to the poison of the plant, so they could be…

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe were wrote in the Dark Romanticism Period. Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre of Romantic Literature that emerged from the transcendental philosophical movement popular in nineteenth-century America. So, what is the characteristics of Dark Romanticism? The characteristics of the Dark Romanticism are the belief in sin and evil, the struggles of human nature, and the focus on the tragic. The dark romantic view countered the optimism of transcendental writers.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale confronts the conflict between passion and his responsibilities by taking out his emotions on himself so that he can keep his obligation to his congregation by being a pure priest. The conflict takes up a great magnitude of Dimmesdale's energy and in the end instigates his demise. The conflict between passion and responsibility is not only evident in the Scarlet Letter, but throughout many noteworthy works of literature. Hawthorne shows this recurring theme throughout the novel, and it is very evident in the book as a whole, but especially in the scenes involving the scaffold, a public form of punishment.…

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gothic literature is a type of writing that is characterized by the elements of fear, death, and gloom. Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a good example of Gothic Lit because it uses the factors of a spooky home, the weather is bad, and there is a ghost or a monster. “He suffered from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable.(18)” This sentence is tied to gothic literature because he is in a old house and he is going crazy. Therefore…

    • 479 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Dark Romanticisms is exploring the inner working of the mind, shadowy approach to the fantastical while containing gloomy, evil, and sinful scenes in poems such as “Black Cat”, “Ambitious Guest”, and “Dream-Land”. Dark Romanticisms is a writing period from 1800 to 1860. Horrific themes, psychological effects of guilt and sin, and creepy symbols are elements founded in dark romanticisms. There are three writers that define dark romanticisms, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorn, and Herman Melville. These writers brought dark romanticism into the world with their gloomy, creepy, and evil poems.…

    • 1232 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Prior to the Statutes of Anne, all works were in the public domain and fair use. If you wanted to take someone’s story and make a play from it, you could. If you wanted to create a translation; you could. Culture was advanced by building on the work before it. The Statutes of Anne was passed as an act of Parliament in 1710. Putting into place a copyright term of 14 years for created works; with an option to renew for another 14 years if the author was still…

    • 90 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rappaccini keeps his daughter, Beatrice, secluded in his garden where she is full of poison. He thinks by doing this, he would be protecting her from the evils in the world. Some townspeople believe he sees other people as science experiments, rather than actual human beings. Although he may see his daughter as his daughter, an actual human being, it seems as though he sees her as a science experiment as well. By turning Beatrice poisonous, he isolates her from the rest of the world. Hawthorne stated, “You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the good hap to see her face.” - The Professor (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/f1124y-001/resourc es/Rappaccinis_Daughter.pdf). Isolating someone from society can cause them to act differently and/or strangely towards others because they don’t know differently. We see this portrayed in Rappaccini's Daughter. By isolating Beatrice from society, she became different and it caused her to act differently towards Giovanni. Because Dr. Rappaccini isolated his daughter from society to try to save her from the evil of the world, it shows the theme of isolation and how much of an impact it can have on a…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At the beginning of the story, we encounter loneliness that forces Elisa to dedicate her energies and love to her flowers. The creation and setting of this narrative gives an impression of isolation and a miserable ambiance. The setting is in autumn, a season characterized by dead leaves and chilly whether. In addition, the place where Elisa stays is compared to a “closed pot” (Steinbeck 175) and it is set apart from the rest of the universe by the “grey-flannel fog” (Steinbeck 175), which is representative of the pot’s cover.…

    • 1128 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Nathanial Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter," many biblical parallels can be found. This short story duplicates the first three chapters of Genesis in the Bible. The similarities range from the characters, to the setting, and even to the deadly plant in the story. The account of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapters 1-3 is extremely similar to the situation of Giovanni and Beatrice in "Rappaccini's Daughter".…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sin, vengeance, evil, and redemption are all words one can associate when thinking about The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The character who takes the truest form of these negative words is Roger Chillingworth. Hester Prynne had married Chillingworth in England, however left her for many years. During those years, Chillingworth spent time with Indians learning their ways while Hester had an ill legitimate child with a beloved priest named Arthur Dimmesdale. When Hester Prynne begins her lifetime of public shame and guilt, Chillingworth makes his timely return and devotes his life to emotionally torturing Arthur Dimmsedale. Through his many years of vindictive vengeance, the reader sees his abundant physical traits, in depth visual symbols, and his theoretical view on transcendentalism that reveal his true personality.…

    • 1576 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The veil in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” is one symbol Hawthorne shares in his short story. Mr. Hooper, a pastor, scares his congregation when he enters into the church with a black veil covering his face. The sexton says, “I can’t really feel as if good Mr. Hooper’s face was behind that piece of crepe” (256). Before the veil, the congregation thought of Mr. Hooper as a good preacher. He sought to bring “his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences” (257). After the veil, he gives a disturbing speech that is out of the ordinary for his character. “The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting…

    • 301 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What intrigued me the most when reading Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut, were the quotes. He says things in a way that really make you step back and think. You could almost tell this book’s story by discussing some of the quotes. In Mother Night, apolitical expatriate American playwright Howard W. Campbell, Jr. refashions himself as a Nazi propagandist in order to pass coded messages on to the U.S. generals and preserve his marriage to a German woman—their "nation of two," as he calls it. But in serving multiple masters, Campbell ends up ruining his life and becoming an unwitting inspiration to bigots. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Vonnegut introduces this as the moral of his book. "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too." It's never been more true: Left or right, Christian or Muslim, those convinced they're doing violence in service of a higher power and against an irretrievably inhuman enemy are the most dangerous creatures of all. But is Howard really such a bad man? All throughout reading the book, I would ask myself that question. No he doesn’t seem to show much emotion, but doesn’t that in a way seem understandable when you think about all he’s done and seen? If he were to show emotion, he would go crazy. I know I would. Though he does seem to have a conscience, somehow, somewhere, deep down inside he is trapped. Trapped inside of the mess he’s gotten himself into. I think he knows to that there is no way out, so he remains as this man he has pretended to be for so many years. Howard writes his story from a jail cell in old Jerusalem in 1961, while awaiting a fair trial for his war crimes by the republic of Israel. He is has a different guard for different parts of the day and night. One of them is Mengel. You are…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    D.H Lawrence was known as a novelist, poet, painter and a literary critic. Lawrence criticized several works, one of his major criticisms was written on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter. Lawrence greatly disfavored the whole book, the critique is all written in a very sarcastic and sardonic tone, as he mentions that the greatest triumph of American women is to seduce all pure men. Lawrence uses three literary devices to demonstrate how the two most purest sinners of the book are not so pure as Hawthorne wants his readers to depict them. Lawrence uses allusions, tone, and repetition to give an insight on why he greatly dislikes the book.…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works “The Scarlet Letter” and “Young Goodman Brown” are literature classics. Hawthorne thoroughly portrays his main themes and ideas in these works. Both of these works illustrate the effects of evil on the human soul. Through Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” and “Young Goodman Brown” we can clearly see that evil causes people to judge other people, evil corrupts one’s faith, and that evil has the power to transform the human soul.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics