Christopher Clarke

Mrs. Pritchard
English II Block IV
09 October 2015
The Many Sides of Humanity
People can be mysterious and hide who they truly are. Dark romantic short stories and
poems sometimes cause readers to analyze characters personalities and thoughts. Edgar Allen
Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne do not always do that, though, and show who their characters are.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poes writing in Dr. Heideggers Experiment, Annabel
Lee, and The Cask of Amontillado show an exaggerated way of how people act and think.
In Dr. Heideggers Experiment, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes his characters to be very
greedy. Though not everyone in life is greedy, this story shows how people may act when faced
with immortality. The story starts with a very mysterious man named Dr. Heidegger, giving his
test subjects what he says to be water from the Fountain of Youth. When the subjects drink the
water, they see how it changes them, and they beg for more and more. The author first mentions
their greediness when he writes, Give us more of this wondrous water! cried they, eagerly. We
are younger--but we are still too old! Quick--give us more! (4). Immediately after drinking the
water they forget to act civilized and become selfish pigs. Due to their foolishness, they knock
the vase that contains the water, and they soon return to their aged state. Dr. Heidegger learns
from his experiment that he will never drink the water after seeing what it has done to his test
subjects, but the test subjects do not learn anything. Their foolishness is clear when Hawthorne
writes, But the doctor's four friends had learned no such lesson. They decided at that moment to
travel to Florida and drink morning, noon, and night from the Fountain of Youth (7). They do

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not learn from their first experience with the water and then search for it themselves. The author
might have put this information about the test subjects going to Florida last to make it more
impactful and show how greedy they truly are. While Dr. Heideggers Experiment shows how
gluttonous people can be, Annabel Lee shows that love can sometimes make people obsessive.
In Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe talks about Annabel Lees beauty and her love for the
narrator. Poe does this to convey how obsessed these characters are with each other. One of the
major symbols in this poem is Annabel Lee herself. She is symbolic of true beauty, a beauty that
is unachievable. Poe shows the narrators great love for Annabel Lee by talking about her so
eloquently, using imagery, and a careful use of words. For example, But our love it was stronger
by far than the love / Of those who were older than we / Of many far wiser than we (Poe,
Annabel Lee 1). The author also uses hyperboles to help show their obsessiveness with each
other, an example of this is when Poe writes, And this maiden she lived with no other thought /
Than to love and be loved by me (Poe, Annabel 1). Annabel loves him so much that he is the
only one she thinks of, which is excessive because no one can love someone that much.
Everything about Annabel Lee represents obsession, but Dr. Heideggers Experiment and
The Cask of Amontillado show an immoral side of human beings, The Cask of Amontillado
being more unethical of the two.
The Cask of Amontillado is a macabre short story by Edgar Allen Poe, and shows a more
sadistic side of humans then gets depicted in literature. Poe is very good at showing the vile side
of people, and he shows it in The Cask of Amontillado. The main character, Montresor kills his
acquaintance; Fortunato, because he insulted him. This killing is a prime example of cruelty
because not only does Montresor kill Fortunato, but he leaves him chained up to die surrounded
by dead bodies in the catacombs. In The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor talks about his

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family motto, Nemo me impune lacessit (Poe, The Cask of Amontillado 4) which when
translated means, no one harms me without impunity. Poe means for Montresor's motto to be
ironic because Fortunato knows the family motto, and still does not see his demise coming. The
motto is also foreshadowing because Montresor mentions the motto before the murder takes
place, and it sums up what happens in the story. One last piece of evidence from The Cask of
Amontillado that shows how cruel people are is when Montresor says, My heart grew sick; it
was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so (Poe, The Cask of Amontillado 6). After
Montresor has finished putting the last brick that will seal Fortunato in forever, he says that his
heart has grown sick from the dampness of the catacombs, instead of it growing sick from killing
a man. Montresor is completely oblivious to the fact that he has done something awful because
he has no morals. While The Cask of Amontillado has many examples of people being cruel
riddled throughout its story, Montresors family motto, and his first words after killing Fortunato
are just two instances of it.
In conclusion, peoples moral compasses can steer them in many directions, and these
particular stories tend to show the characters deflecting to the darker side of the spectrum. Edgar
Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne show an exaggerated way of how people act and think. Poe
shows us obsession and cruelty while Hawthorne shows us greed. However, they all demonstrate
the an awful side of the human emotion.

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Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Dr. Heidegger's Experiment. N.p.: n.p., 1837. Eldritchpress.org. Eldritch
Press. Web. 11 Oct. 2015. <http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/dhe.html>.
Poe 1:
Poe, Edgar Allen. Annabel Lee. Chicago: Poetry Foundation, 2015. Poetry Foundation. Poetry
Foundation. Web. 11 Oct. 2015. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151>.
Poe:2
Poe, Edgar Allen. The Cask of Amontillado. N.p.: n.p., 1846. The Cask of Amontillado.
Xroads.virginia.edu, 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
<http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/cask.html>.