Youth is believed to be one the most important phase in one’s life. When someone is young they believe that they dispute or fight with anyone over someone. Also with being young comes the obsessiveness and the will to fight anyone for something. Finally, they do not care who gets hurt in the process. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment, Youth is a metaphor for the false notion of invincibility in youth because no one is invincible, but when one is young and full of life they feel that they are in full control and have power over anyone and anything.
The people that Dr. Heidegger chose have previously met when they were younger. When they previously met, they were young and fighting over the widow. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, “Mr. Medboune, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other’s throat for her sake” (238). This shows that they were willing to fight each other to be with the Widow. Them wanting to fight each other over a girl that is a woman shows that they were careless and reckless. Like the quote
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The water was the key to being young again. All four characters have made mistakes in life that led them to a corrupt life. When they have the chance to be young again by drinking the water from The Fountain of Youth. When they first drank from the water they all complained that the water was not taking effect and that they were not young enough. They then asked the doctor for more water and the doctor let them get more. When the water was mostly gone, they fought over the water and the vase fell to the ground and shattered completely. With this obsession of wanting to feel “invincible” they dropped the vase in between the dispute between the four and their chances of being young again were destroyed. The fighting over the vase led them to believe they were invincible, but nobody is invincible in this