good vs evil

Good vs. Evil
In the era of Romanticism and Gothicism, that is in the mid1800s many things and authors emerged. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a transcendentalist who worked out in an essay called “Self-Reliance”, this essay is about accepting yourself and your principles: not concerning peoples thoughts about you and to stay true to ourselves, there is something divine inside of us and we should trust it. Another transcendentalist author is Henry David Thoreau with his essay “Civil Disobedience” where he states his beliefs about the people with the government. He believes that when a government is unjust people should not obey the laws if they seemed unfair to them and that the people’s obligation is to do what they think is right. As in for other authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne in the short story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” the four characters already wasted their beauty, youth, money and power and wanted to gain it back, so the doctor gave them this liquid from the fountain of youth, they are warned not to make the same mistakes they did when they were young, but they do what they are told not to. Another author is William Faulkner with his short story “A rose for Emily”, he shows this women who is longed disturbed for long by the death of her father, they say she is crazy, that she is going to kill herself, and things like that lead her to kill someone and hide him in her house. Through the similarities of these transcendentalist authors with each other and gothics authors, we can see how they view human nature that is being good or evil.
Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau share a deep understanding of the human nature, that we are free to do and chose whatever we want and feel like is the right decision. For example, in his essay “Self-Reliance”, by Ralph Waldo Emerson depicts humans as individuals who should stick to what they believe and not change their beliefs for society. We see this when he writes “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think’’(Emerson). This quote is very direct, it makes us think about how much we care sometimes about others opinion, that we don’t follow our own beliefs, we are free to think and follow what we want. Similarly, Henry David portrays humans as individual who are free to go against the law if necessary, because what govern us is not always right. For instance we can see how he feels in this quote from his essay “Civil Disobedience”, “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies”(Thoreau 372). This quote expresses that the ones who worked for the state work as if they were machines, not as open minded people who works for their own beliefs, instead they have to follow what others say. These similar views of human nature reflect Transcendentalist belief that the “inner light” within us that lead to an emphasis on the authority of the self.
In contrast, Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner portray human nature as essentially evil and disturbed. For example in his short story, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”, Nathaniel Hawthorne depict humans as individuals who never really learn form their mistakes and keep on failing in that aspect. In his short story he shows four old people who would love to go back and be young, “Age, with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke’’(Hawthorne 509). This shows how they felt about their age and being young, when they were given the water form the fountain of youth they had their moment of joy when they looked at themselves but, didn’t learned form their past mistakes and did them all over again. Like wise William Faulkner portrays humans as individuals who are disturbed. We see this in this quote from “A rose for Emily”: “so the next day we all said ‘she will kill herself’; and we said it would be the best thing”(Faulkner 522). This quote reflects how people judge what they see without really knowing how it is. They thought in the story that Emily, the main character, was going to kill herself without knowing why she had bought all the venom for rats. This shows how some of these conclusions humans make without knowing the truth really brings up the bad side of some of us. These similar views of human nature reflect Gothic beliefs that humans are essentially evil.
We can see the difference between Emerson and Faulkner in which they both viewed human nature differently. We can see that in the essay “Civil Disobedience” hoy they view humans as something that only does good, while for the Gothics they make them evil, for example “In a rose for Emily”, she killed someone, she was not social, very lonely and scary. So its not only the difference of ideas but also setting, which gives us the idea of more loneliness and how disturbed she is.
In conclusion, throughout this essays and short stories we can see how each author portrays human nature. Some believe we are born evil, and other believe we are born free and good. Throughout their stories they give some examples of how life is.