Symbolism in Poe and Hawthorne's Works

Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are best known for their techniques being very similar to one another. They both specialize in American Gothic Genre, they both specialize in horror and mystery. They both wrote about humanities dark side and the evil within humanity. Gothic writing focus is the dark side of the human mind, both Poe and Hawthorne knew how to capture this style with the use of symbols, themes, and narration which focused on people’s malicious intentions and heinous motives. Both authors give their characters psychological issues. Poe’s stories are told in the first-person and focus on one character psychological persona. Poe build is a sense of approaching doom stronger than Hawthorne. Hawthorne uses third-person and focuses more on his characters' thoughts and behaviors, and how their actions affect what is happening around them. His stories also tend to be more of a romantic nature than Poe’s and he tends to create stories of conflicting interpretations to share lessons of life.

Poe and Hawthorne use symbolism throughout their stories. A few symbols in the Tell-Tale Heart, are the old man’s eye and heart. He compares the old man’s eye to an eye of a vulture. He states that the old man’s eye “the eye of a vulture…. whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold” is the reason the old man must be killed - even though he “loved the old man” (Poe). Once he decides he must get rid of the “Evil Eye,” he looks in on the old man every night for eight nights. When he looks into the room on the eighth night, he shines the light “as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot,” the eye, upon which he hears “the beating of the old man’s heart” which just increased his fury as it got louder and louder (Poe). The narrator compares the beating heart to a watch, it just keeps on beating “I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” (Poe). That seems to beat grows louder to the narrator his fear that the neighbors will hear it since it is causing him to act, pulling the heavy bed over the old man, killing him.

The narrator thinks he is a genius, not mad. “If still, you think me mad, you will think it no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body” (Poe). Killing the old man, he then dismembers him, and hides his body. “replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye – not even his [the old man’s] – could have detected anything wrong' (Poe). In this passage, he assumed the eye had some supernatural power that had the ability to see through objects, and even into the narrator’s mind. Police arrive to investigate a scream heard by a neighbor, the narrator being confident, he invites them in to stay for a while. However, when the police are in the room where he has hidden the body, the narrator becomes paranoid, he thinks that the heart is beating so loud that the police can hear it and he screams out in the madness it causes him. In the Tell-Tale Heart, Poe starts off his narration with a strong, emphatic tone. He then gives a character that psychologically unstable persona, single, following his foreshadow of dooming the character. Reading anything that had to do with Poe or Hawthorne makes you believe you are in a madman's mind. Although they are just pieces of literature, that does not mean there are not mad-men recreating similar crimes. Poe’s work was not meant to teach a ‘life lesson’ his work was just simply a way to share a variety of emotions like, hate, anger, guilt, and hope, which would be Poe’s most distinguished contribution to literature. His work derives from his practiced analytical methods from an author’s point of view and as a critic to his own work. His intention was to formulate an artistic piece with every piece of literature he wrote. Aside from his theatrical basis, Poe’s psychological intensity that is a big characteristic of his writing, especially those tales with a horror twist in it. These stories like “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Hawthorne’s works “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” he also uses symbolism to set the scene throughout his story to reveal the persona of the character. He sets the scene within Padua, Italy, which symbolizes the ‘present’ garden of Eden. Which is where Rappaccini is given the persona of the creator, attending to the garden, and flourishing it, with beautiful flowers and with poisonous plants. It's ironic how she is the one helping the garden flourish, but she prefers the scientific side of humanity. “His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment” (Hawthorne). He uses his daughter as an experiment, which is a selfish act for a parent. He starts noticing his daughter is immune to the poisonous plants, but throughout tending the plants she becomes poisonous to herself and to others. Hawthorne gave Beatrice a person of this beautiful young woman, but toxic to others. Hawthorne gave Giovanni an important part, it is as if Hawthorne was telling his story from Giovanni’s eyes.

Just like Poe, Hawthorne uses his unique style. When Hawthorne describes the garden, he uses elements that make you feel as if you are there. You can feel yourself there with Beatrice and the toxic plants, the entire garden was 'veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage' (Hawthorne). The plants in the garden 'seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural' to Giovanni (Hawthorne). Some of the plants in the garden 'crept serpent-like along the ground' (Hawthorne). Hawthorne creates a tone of romance and uncertainty – how can Giovanni and Beatrice ever truly be together; “hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to renew the contest” (Hawthorne).

Poe and Hawthorne are both authors that specialize in Dark Romanticism and a Gothic style. They both use melancholic aspects to tell their stories. Comparing both their works they both seem to throw around the concepts of good and evil, the mental effects of sin and guilt, they also address the mentally unstable thoughts of the human mind.

Although they use the same writing style, it is their approach to the aspects that differ. Hawthorne being more ‘proper’ in his narration examines the darker regions of a human’s soul. Which he called “the truth of the human heart” in portraying the inherent in the essential character of a human being. Such ash Roger Chillingworth from The Scarlet Letter who has a spiritual change into someone he called ‘a friend.’ Poe, on the other hand, finds his darkness in the human mind, and to show the outcomes of man’s evil, he uses an untrustworthy narrator to unfold the story often, in the end, is a menace by his own realization of the absurd workings of his mental state of mind. This is shown with such narrators as those of 'A Cask of Amontillado' and of 'A Tell-Tale Heart' who scream out in their horrifying realizations.

Both Poe and Hawthorne use symbolism in their work, it gives their writing a unique style. The Scarlets Letters, black veils, haunted house, poison bushes are the secret sin in Hawthorne work. While Poe uses symbolism like black cats, fools costumes, decaying mansion, vulture’s eyes, ravens, catacombs, and coffins as an unbiased correlative to the mind of Poe’s character.

Poe and Hawthorne did have various similarities in their writing technique. They both used the same Gothic style, horror and mystery, the psychological effects of evil on the human mind, and good, versus evil. However, their approach varied as did their narration style. Poe’s stories are told in the first person and he looked at man’s thoughts from within his mind and how his behavior then affects his surroundings. Hawthorne wrote his stories in the third person and he focused on man’s thoughts and behaviors as the result of what is happening around him and how he interacts with (or tries to control) his surroundings. Both Poe and Hawthorne were great writers of the American Gothic genre. While their styles varied somewhat, they were both excellent at sharing the evil nature of man.