Rappaccini's Daughter Comparative Essay

As singer-songwriter, Eric Burdon says, “Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other.¨ Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini's Daughter” is a short story about a young student called Giovanni who falls in love with a girl called Beatrice. Will Weaver’s “WWJD?” is about suzy who is a very religious sixteen year old girl. She is a transfer student to Riverfolk high school, she is often bullied by Eddie and his gang. Both pieces of literature share a lot of similarities and differences. One main theme that stands out between the two pieces is corruption.

The people who fell victim to lust were in a never ending dust storm. Francesca also went on to describe to their punishment, “ This one, who now will never leave my side, Kissed my mouth trembling. A Galeotto, that book!” (Inferno V.121-122). Since Francesa fell victim to lust, she has to forever be around her lover.

During the Puritan time period, puritans believed god created nature but in contrast, Romantics believed god was in all nature. In reaction to religious puritan views, people began to look at nature in a new way, wanting to be a part of nature rather than just observing it. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes in the time of Romanticism and with these views he suggests that dark colors and light colors make us feel different emotions. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter and the short story, Rappaccini’s Daughter, Hawthorne suggests that nature uses dark and light colors to suggest the beauty of nature and the darkness and wrongness in sin. This reliance upon nature gives us emotions from these colors portrayed in these stories.

When many people hear the word “romantic” they think of a candlelit dinner and a dozen roses. The origin of the term, however, comes from the Romantic era: an artistic movement prominent in the mid-1800s into the early 1900s. Romantic artists use elements of idealism, imagination, individuality, and often the supernatural to denounce the validity of logic and science. In these Romantic stories specifically, love ends in tragedy and at the fault of science. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” it is revealed that the scientist Rappaccini had been gradually giving his daughter, Beatrice, doses of poison as part of a twisted experiment. This results in Beatrice taking her own life at the end of the story rather than live life in

Giovanni in his room can hear the water gurgling in Dr. Rappaccini’s garden, from an ancient marble fountain located in the center of the plants and bushes; of particular interest to Giovanni is “one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem.” The doctor, scientifically examining the plants in a detached and cautious manner as if “walking among malignant influences,” shows fear towards the large plant. At this point he summons his daughter `’Beatrice! Beatrice!’''

Though the two previously analyzed parabolic short stories assist in showing Hawthorne’s writing style and goals, the exegesis of his most convoluted and allegorical story, Rappaccini’s Daughter, truly accomplishes this exposition of Hawthorne’s work. In Padua, Italy, Giovanni Guasconti rents a room with a view of Dr. Rappaccini’s garden. He meets professor Dr. Pietro Baglioni, who tells Giovanni that be must be cautious of Rappaccini since he is heartless and cares only about his scientific work. Giovanni notices Rappaccini’s beautiful daughter, Beatrice, as falls in love. They meet with each other several times and Giovanni realizes he has become poisonous, as plants are dying in his hands. Baglioni reveals that Beatrice has grown up constantly exposed to poison and is poisonous herself, so he gives Giovanni a vial of medicine to give to Beatrice as a cure, but when she takes it she promptly dies. Literary critic Roy R. Male introduces the involved nature of the story and expresses, “This complexity manifests itself first in the objects of the garden, the ‘Eden’ of the present world” (Male). Just like The Birthmark, Rappaccini's Daughter tells of death caused by human pride, but this is trivial. The allegorical nature of this story lies in its biblical connection. Rappaccini's garden symbolizes the garden of Eden and the story and its characters directly follow that of the creation of man, the creation of sin and the breakage of worldly perfection. Giovanni represents Adam, Beatrice is Eve, Rappaccini plays God and Baglioni acts as Satan. Giovanni and Beatrice are Adam and Eve since they are two innocent characters who fall victim to the deception and sinful malicious intent of Baglioni. Rappaccini is God because his primary role is to create and construct. Since Hawthorne makes an allegorical link to the Garden of Eden, the story can be perceived in the context of the New Testament. Assuming the reader comprehends Hawthorne's connection, they are then able to interpret a much more involved story with greater insight. Rappaccini's Daughter can be interpreted as a parable, but can also be seen as the more complex allegory that it is. Further, Hawthorne exposes a duality in evil through his allegory. Male

Can love--or what we imagine to be love-- sometimes inspire the most terrible of crimes?  Human emotion is often messy and often without defining lines. Can instinct alone impair our reason, or can a third deadly emotion mar all? In “Othello”, Shakespeare bids us look at some ugly facets of the human psyche and how what is beautiful and good can be twisted and destroyed in the name of self-interest and damning pride.

Love can take on many different meanings in literature depending on various factors. These include author perspectives, bias, experience, culture, and tradition. In class, an assortment of magical realism stories has been covered and discussed. Love appears as a metaphor in some way or another in each of them. In “Death and Transfiguration of a Teacher”, by Maria Teresa Solari, and “In the Family”, by Maria Elena Llano, love represents power and the danger of it.

   This essay will analyze Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Rappaccini’s Daughter” to determine the conflicts in the tale, their climax and resolution, using the essays of literary critics to help in this interpretation.

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a story set in the mid-nineteenth century in Padua, Italy, a country well known for its romantic stories and history. This period in time was marked by various scientific discoveries, especially in medicine. This boom led to extensive debates on science and religion. There was the argument of whether or not to let things happen naturally or to interfere with the processes of nature. It begins with a student,

In the rollercoaster that is a person’s life, one experiences an abundance of emotions and encounters many people who influence their life in a different way. Of the many ways that a person can be influenced perhaps the most perplexing one is love. Love is an abstract idea with a central definition that is hard to grasp. This complexity is a result of the many different types of love that one can experience. For example, the love that one feels for their spouse is different than the love that one feels towards their child or their parent. However, despite the way that one chooses to define it, love nevertheless has a strong impact on a person’s life and can change a person for better or for worse. This impact is further illustrated in Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The novel follows the character Edmond Dantes through his vengeful journey once he is imprisoned in the Chateau D’if and his transformation into the Count of Monte Cristo. As he becomes corrupt, people from his past and his new encounters help him to realize life's blessings and the true meaning of wisdom. In the Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas uses the character Edmond Dantes to suggest that when a

“Rappaccini’s Daughter,” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a short story about how beauty is within and not just physical. When Hawthorne was four years old his father was in an accident and died on the scene, leaving his mother to raise him and his siblings alone. Thus, leading him to have respect for all women, and it is reflected in the story. For instance, the main character Beatrice is this aesthetic, sweet, and a naïve woman and Giovanni is just focused more on her beauty rather than anything else. Moreover, when Giovanni first sees Beatrice in the garden, he describes her as the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen and is just blinded by her beauty. What he doesn’t know is that her father, Doctor Rappaccini, is a scientist who cares more about science more than anything else. The place where Beatrice and Giovanni spend all their time together is in the garden, which represents loneliness’, and unfortunately one of the main characters will learn that the hard way. When Giovanni meets Professor Baglioni, a professor of medicine—who is Rappaccini’s rival— he helps him get Beatrice, or at least that’s what Giovanni thinks. However, what Giovanni does not know is that “the love of his life” isn’t who he thinks she is.

In Italy as school boys Sam and Antonello learned a poem a week. They could recite those poems word for word. But they were simple poems about animals and naughty children, about trees and rivers. Slav’s poems were long and complex, often they didn’t understand them but Slav’s voice reading the words was mesmerising and so they listened. From these poems, Antonello captured and stored images, be they migrating birds or the five cities as teeming sores, as parasites, they came back to him often when he was sketching, they forced him to look closer, to look from another angle. Some of these sketches, inspired by the poems Slav read to him were wonderous, unexpected, in them there were details that Antonello didn’t know he had seen.

One of the features of the romantic poetry is the effort to escape from the conventional world and controlling society. Majorly, for the romantic poets there were two main ways to achieve that: through the connection with the nature and/or the creation another better place and conditions through the imagination. Along with the poverty, restrictions, child abuse and others, Death was one of the most popular topics attracting the attention of almost all romantic minds, who desired to find the answers to the mystery of death, because in the world, which is full of various limitations and problems, the death was considered as an analogy to the freedom.

The subject of this artwork is the scene from the emotionally autobiographical work of Dante Alighieri “La Vita Nuova”, at the moment of Beatrice Portinari’s death, who the author loved deeply. Rossetti depicts the moment of Beatrice’s death on her parents’ balcony in 1290, however, for the artist this scene means much more, than just a visual interpretation of a scene from a book.