Romanticism In The Black Cat

Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” Have you ever wondered, “How cruel can someone be? How does someone’s mind get to such a dark place?” Well, you’re not alone. Early Romanticist writers were trying to answer these same questions. For example, Edgar Allan Poe’s writing always seems to revolve around a madman. Maybe Poe was trying to get into the mindset of a crazy person through his writing like a lot of other Romanticists? That may be the case, because although Poe’s writing made himself sound mental, he was probably just trying to understand how someone goes crazy. Many other Romanticists seemed to be just as crazy too, at least according to their writings. American writers sought

In fact, many people seem to agree with this. On the State University of New York at Oswego’s website, Mallory Eckert observes that, “Poe 's life had many hardships that inspired his work. Readers can clearly see the connection to Poe and the other people in his life to the characters in his poems and stories. Many of Poe 's works may seem normal at first, but almost always end in tragedy, just as his life did. He did not look to any literary works for inspiration, and acted more from his imagination and the experiences he went through. Acting more as a literary inspiration for others (Oswego.edu).” When trying to prove this statement true, Eckert who wrote the article gives examples of 3 of Poe’s works, those which happen to be his most famous poems. However, it is not only in poems that Poe seems to connect his life into writing, since the narrator in “The Black Cat” has a lot of similarities to Poe. Many people know about the sadness of Poe’s life, such as the fact that everyone around him basically died, but what a lot of people may not know is that Poe was a very self-destructive man. He was addicted to gambling and--like the narrator--to alcohol. In fact, according to eNotes, “Poe established a reputation as an alcoholic and was even last seen alive at a tavern. In the story, the narrator mentions that there is

Although Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t seem to go through as much as Edgar Allan Poe in his life, having to only really worry about financial issues and his father passing away during his childhood, he still seemed to ponder on the darkness within humans. However, while Poe based his stories on certain elements of his life, Hawthorne seems to write about human nature simply because writers in those days got famous by being transcendentalists. In fact Hawthorne, wasn’t even interested in Romanticism, if not for his wife-to-be at the time. According to Biography.com, “Nathaniel Hawthorne ended his self-imposed seclusion at home about the same time he met Sophia Peabody, a painter, illustrator, and transcendentalist. During their courtship, Hawthorne spent some time at the Brook Farm community where he got to know Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He didn’t find transcendentalism to his favor but living in the commune allowed him to save money for his impending marriage to Sophia (biography.com).” That is to say, Hawthorne would not even care for the writings of a transcendentalist if not for being surrounded by them all the time. Nevertheless, being around transcendentalists could have most likely made Hawthorne start thinking like one, making his mind ponder on certain things that it might not have pondered on before, such as human nature--or, to be more specific--the darker side of human nature. Hawthorne was also a Puritan, and he knew for a fact that Puritans