Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne: a Comparison Essay

Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were 2 of Americas finest Romantic writers. These two writers have stood the test of time and ar read as oft today if non more than they were in their own time. The major soil that both authors were as popular as they are is beca apply of the fact that they delved into the human mind to create their psychological literature. Edgar Allan Poes life story spanned from eighteen nine until nineteen forty-nine, the years that were the beginning of the Romantic Movement. Poe was considered an educate man for his time. He attended the University of Virginia and West Point.Since West Point is a military school, he no doubt studied psychology because unitary who would be a commander in the army would need to survive about the way the enemy thinks. Poe did not use this knowledge as a military officer, but used it to create excellent psychological terror in literature. During a time when the arts focused on the supernatural, Poe looked to the char acters own mind to provide terror. The narrator of The Tell-Tale amount is so terrified by his guilty conscience that he reveals the murder he has committed to the authorities, as does the narrator of The Black Cat.In the famous defraud story The Cask of Amontillado, the reader experienced the terror of unitarys condemnation to be walled up in a small wine cellar room to die and to have the time to think about what is to hand in total darkness and isolation. The Fall of the House of Usher as well as leaves the narrator completely terrified, not because of his safety, but because of the information that his mind must(prenominal) process and the knowledge that he may begin to suffer from the comparable madness that Roderick Usher is doomed to endure.Nathaniel Hawthorne was also an expert in delving into the deepest regions of a characters mind. The Scarlet Letter, one of Hawthornes best whole kit is about a woman who must wear a ruby-red A because she is an adulterer. The t own minister is the man who is also responsible for the sin. However, because he is a male and cannot get pregnant, the community does not know of his guilt. rather he punishes himself much more than his female counterpart until the sin takes on a supernatural quality. It does so only through the guilt that he must endure.The Ministers Black Veil is about some other minister who physically punishes himself for a psychological sin that he has committed. This repentance has bothered the congregation to the point that they isolate the minister. Again, it is their psychological fear and guilt that is their terror. Hawthorne, in his attempt to prove that all are sinners and that all battle with good and evil in their minds, proves his point in Young Goodman Brown. In this short story, a young man must decide whether to look at his soul to become a successful man or to anticipate free.The resolution of the story is that the horrid scene the young man had run into the night before w as only a dream, yet he is not sure that it took place in his mind or if it was real. Reality and what one perceived as reality was something that Hawthorne was a master. Both Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne made use of the human mind as an instrument a persons demise rather than actions. They understood the power of the human mind eve though they did not know what we do today. They are shining examples of psychological literature as an instrument of terror and guilt.