Poe Vs Hawthorne A Comparison Contrast Essay

The greatest underlying difference in Poe and Hawthorne’s stories are their categorized styles. Hawthorne is an author drawn to writings of romance, which holds broad guidelines. He uses his “unexplained” happenings as part of this genre. Hawthorne uses his characters to portray his belief that the truth of life comes from the human heart. Mr. Dimmesdale’s sins, in The Scarlet Letter, were given away by his heart and conscience. His deteriorating health was linked to his guilt and the burden it laid upon his heart. Hawthorne’s romantic literature likes to use the extraordinary, like in the idea of a “fountain of youth” (“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”). The importance of nature plays a strong role when the secrecy and evil of the woods are described and gossiped about in The Scarlet Letter. All of these aspects portray stories built on the romance theory, which Hawthorne helped to develop.

eature Poe and Hawthorne consistently develop in their writing is the use of symbolism. In Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, symbolism in both light and dark forms was represented. From the light patterns of the fires illuminating the rooms and the flames lively dancing across the walls, to the dark clock held within the black room that was ticking away the time the revelers had left to live, Poe strongly contrasts life (light) and death (dark) (“The Masque of the Red Death”). Hawthorne also uses light and dark imagery in his short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”. The main dark symbol comes in the form of the black veil that Mr. Hooper wears to represent some form of sin. The comparative light symbolism comes in less obvious forms during the story, like in the metaphor of a smile being a flame or flickering of a light, which makes you question if the truth is as dark as it is assumed to be by the town (“The Minister’s Black Veil”).

Because most of Poe and Hawthorne’s writings that we have analyzed use a narrator, we must use this to see what the author’s intent was for the story. Intent can be conveyed through the language of the piece. Both authors use a higher-level vocabulary and diction, showing the intent for an educated audience. This can be seen in the use of words like “visage”, “venerable”, “omniscient” (Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil”), “illimitable”, “phantasm”, and “sagacious” (Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”). Also, the reade

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