Comparing Poe And The Raven By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Poe and Hawthorne were writers of a genre known as the American Goth. Their writings were characterized by Gothic literary devices pertaining to mystery and horror. Poe and Hawthorne had the ability to bring forth an atmosphere of horror and suspense through their preoccupation with gloom and death, but they had very different ways of presenting their stories.

THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

In this story, Hawthorne brings forth of his favorite themes; that humankind is afflicted universally by seven deadly sins: covetousness, pride, envy, lust, anger, sloth, and gluttony. The story reveals Hawthorne’s tears the masks off the faces of his characters, whereas in The Minister’s Black Veil, the face of one single character is

The narrator asks the raven a series of distressing questions even when he knows that the response is already predetermined. The narrator of the poem illustrates how humans search for meaning even when their existence seems meaningless (Poe, Quinn, O’Neill, and Kauffer 21). The person knows that the speech by the raven has no meaning, but he still continues to ask questions that may give significance to the predetermined responses by the raven. A person would rather be lonely than face the pain of accepting that he lost his lover, Lenore. “The Raven” is a poem that seeks to question whether the supernatural provokes fear or later creates decisions pertaining to the

In Hawthorne’s work, the minister is ostracized by his community since the members think that his action of wearing a veil throughout brings gloom to their lives. His fiancée, Elizabeth, leaves him and breaks off their companionship as she does not understand why he wears the veil, and more so, why he will not remove it. In Poe’s poem, the person is in a house by himself reading a lore that is forgotten by a dying fire in the hope that he may forget about the death of Lenore, his beloved. Both the minister and the narrator’s loneliness are somewhat self-inflicted (Hawthorne and McIntosh 34). The minister wears a veil and refuses to remove it. As a result, he is ostracized from his companions and friends, whereas the narrator in the poem refuses to accept the anguish of losing his loved one, which means he will never really move