Dr.

Heidegger's Experiment
Nathaniel Hawthorne: a very well know American writer. Morality.

Entrevista con un vampire, pelicula par aver.

Characters: Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, Mr. Gascoigne and Widow

Wycherly (a gentlewoman).

The story is about a Dr. who organizes a meeting with 4 old friends. Three of them
are gentlemen and the last one is a gentlewoman.

They all have in common melancholy. They were people who had been
unfortunate in life and had suffered due to their bad decisions.

In this meeting, the Doctor shows them an old rose which was inside an old book.
It was a rose that a girl who was going to get married to him had given it to him 55
years ago. The Rose had been there since then.

Then, the Dr. asks them if they believe it is possible the rose bloom again, they
refuse to believe that. But the doctor claims to have the water from the fountain of
youth and when he placed the rose in a container with this water, it re-bloomed
again.

The doctor’s guests want to drink this water but the doctor suggests them to write
notes to not commit the same mistakes again. They drink the water and become
younger. Then, they want to drink more and they become even younger. But their
youngness doesn’t last so much; eventually, they come to be old again.

The experiment seems to be this: if people were able to become young again,
would they have learned a lesson from the experience of having lived for so many
years? In the end, the four guests who have drunk from the Fountain have not
learned this lesson: they simply want to go to Florida, find the fountain, and "drink"
from it constantly. They have not observed, as the doctor has, how foolishly they
behaved under the influence of youth. Their passions inflamed and their youthful
follies reawakened, the guests become aggressive, competing over the woman
they once loved, exactly as they did when they were really young. Hawthorne's
conclusion seems to be that foolish people do not really learn anything from their
past mistakes, but will repeat them if given the opportunity.
Another interesting question Hawthorne leaves open in this story is this: does the
fluid really make the guests young again, or is it simply the power of suggestion?
On the one hand, we know that they have observed themselves in the mirror and
seen young faces, but when the long mirror in the study catches a glimpse of them,
it sees them as old people behaving ridiculously. We could interpret this as
emphasizing the point that youthful behavior is excused in the young, but if we saw
older people behaving in this way, it would be clear how ridiculous and damaging it
is. It may also indicate that only age and the sense of being old and tired ever
stops fools from behaving foolishly—underlining Hawthorne's moral still further.