Dr. Heidegger's Experiment - a Gothic tale?

List of content

1.  Introduction  2

2.  Rapprochement to the Gothic literature  3

2.1  The origin of Gothic literature  3

2.2  The elements of Gothic literature  3

2.3  Hawthorne and the Gothic literature  4

3.  The Plot  5

3.1  Publication  5

3.2  A Summary of the action  5

3.3  The place and the Gothic elements  6

4.  Characterization and Symbols  8

4.1  The Background of the Experiment  8

4.2  Hawthorne’s definition of sin  9

4.3  The result of the experiment  10

5.  Conclusion  11

  Bibliography  12

1  as cited by Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife, Vol 1. Cambridge  

1884  , p 250 from Richard J. Jacobson, Hawthorne’s conception of the creative  

  process, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965 , p  15

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1. Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), the well-known author of the famous novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), wrote this short story on the base of the Gothic kind of literature, which played a considerable role in his life.

What are Gothic tales? Do they represent the origin of modern horror shockers like the works of Stephen King and Thomas Harris? Do they have the intention to enhance our fantasy so that the reader does not switch off the light when he goes to bed and suffer from horrible nightmares? Obviously this short story creates a shiver, but I will try to show, that there is more implied than just a creepy suspense.

The starting point is the definition of Gothic literature, then I will investigate Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment to find out common aspects to this kind of literature. At the end, I will show the reader that there is much more implied than you will know after the first reading of the story.

I may set a point thinking about …

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2. Rapprochement to the Gothic literature

2.1 The origin of Gothic literature

The term `Goth´ originated from the east-germanic people in Middle Europe (2 ^nd -6 ^th century), later it described a style in architecture ² (12 ^th -16 ^th century), which inspired the authors of the 17 ^th century much. With the Publication of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764, the horror story appeared in literature for the first time. The predominant genre of the Romanticism in this time distinguished the novel, which describes reality, life and time, from the Romance, relating what will not happen in the real world. The Romance was subdivided into historical, oriental and Gothic but often those three melted into one - the Gothic Romance. The themes of the Gothic Romance were better suited for a shorter treatment - so, the genre of the short story became influenced too. In Germany, Gottfried August Bürger’s ghost ballad Lenore (1773) was the beginning of literary Romanticism. The Gothic short story was imported in America about 1820 by Washington Irving’s Tales of a Traveller. The most significant authors of this period were E.T.A. Hoffmann and L. Tieck in Germany, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Brockden Brown in America and George Sand and Honore´ de Balzac in the French literature. The Monk by Gregory Lewis was the climax of Gothic craze.

2.2 The elements of Gothic literature 3

The dark settings and the abrupt invasion of supernatural powers are two significant basic principles in the Gothic Romance. Bleeding statues, living paintings, obscure castles with many secrets, old magical books or an unordinary and mysterious crime are also important elements. The role of the villain, often an Italian, is very special because sometimes he has a deformed body (compare with the Hunchback in Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo or the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, the modern Prometheus) and is in an alliance with the devil or controlled by him. The Gothic literature was inspired from the nature and fascinated of its dark unreality which of course only exist in the people’s mind. Natural elements like rain, thunder,

fog or sunset rise up the suspense and were combined with magical objects like books or amulets beside persons like the witch, the wizard or ghosts and demons.

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² see Notre-Dame in Paris or the cathedral in Freiburg for an example of this kind of architecture

³ Jane Lundblad, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Tradition of Gothic Romance, New York: Haskell House Publishers LTD., 1964, p. 17 - 23

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