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Lundyn Herring
Mrs. Kirschner
English II: Block 1
31 January 2016
The Corruption of Young Minds
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe see the dark in everyone and explore the
capabilities of mental illness and fact or fiction. Dark Romanticism studies the intense emotional
workings of the inner human mind, making audiences apprehensive about themselves and the
world around them. Through The Chimaera, by Nathaniel Hawthorne and both Berenice,
and Lenore by Edgar Allan Poe, these Dark Romantic authors demonstrate that a youthful
mind has the potential to be endlessly beautiful, but there are evils present in the world that can
sabotage that child-like innocence at any moment. Innocence is a trait that every human has, a
trait that should be preserved, but has the potential to be jeopardized in the outside world, and all
of the temptations that the outside world has to offer.
The innocence of a young mind is key in The Chimaera by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
meaning that youth plays an influential role in this short story. There is one prominent symbol in
this short story that represents what Hawthorne is trying to communicate to the reader. The small
child that encourages Bellerophon from the beginning represented the hope for humanity: Every
morning the child gave him a new hope to put in his bosom, instead of yesterdays withered one.
Dear Bellerophon, he would cry, looking up hopefully into his face, I think we shall see
Pegasus to-day! (Hawthorne 5). Children have the habit of believing the impossible, the
fictional worlds that are made from scratch inside their miniature minds, those are the traits that
are praised and improved. Pegasus was an impossible concept for older people, basing off of the

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pure knowledge of the world they know of as true. Hawthorne is very descriptive when it come
to describing scenery and settings: In the more level part of the country, there were the ruins of
houses that had been burnt, and, here and there, the carcasses of dead cattle strewn about the
pastures where they had been feeding (Hawthorne 9). Hawthorne uses vivid imagery to
illustrate the destruction of the Chimaera and how the Chimaeras actions contribute to the death
of animals and most likely some people. Hawthorne is blatantly blunt when describing this
scene; he directly describes how it looked. That shows child-like abruptness of his writing and
makes it seem as though a child saw it through their eyes. This short story had the capability to
be darker than it was, but it had a happy ending, and that is surprising coming from a dark
romantic. At the end of the story, the boy is right after all. The adults are wrong for once, and the
inevitable purity of youth is what wins in the end. Children have the mental capacity to believe
fiction over fact like Santa Claus, for example, and the way that Hawthorne made full circle, in
which he included the young boy from the beginning really encouraged Bellerophon to defeat the
Chimaera and be a hero. As Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates his knowledge of Dark
Romanticism, Edgar Allan Poe soon came later, illustrating his knowledge as well.
Edgar Allan Poe manages to include a corrupt, youthful mind in this short story known as
Berenice. The main character, Egaeus, has a type of mental disorder known as Monomania.
His mental disorder causes him to fixate on certain details that may seem meaningless to
someone of average mental health. Being that he was alone most of his time, in a big empty
house, this led him to fixate on Berenice, his cousin, whom he had admired because of her
beauty and grace, soon proceeding to fall in love with her. In Poes writing, almost anything and
everything could be symbols; the focal point of this story revolved around inanimate symbols.
Berenices Teeth represented Egaeus obsession with Berenice, long after her death: They they

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alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of
my mental life (Poe Berenice 4). As Berenices health starts to deteriorate, Egaeus no longer
fixates onto Berenice as a person, but onto her teeth. Egaeus soon starts to dehumanize her and
refer to her as it and the. When she finally dies, he could not accept it, her death was not an
option that he could live with, so he proceeded to fall in love with her teeth. So he unknowingly
rewards himself with the treasure of her teeth. Egaeus is only a young boy when he starts to
admire Berenice as more than a friendly family member and is only slightly older when he starts
to romanticize her teeth and ignore her as a person. This admiration shows the mental capacity of
Poes characters, Egaeus in particular, has the capability to imagine the unimaginable, mental
illness or not. Poe is surprisingly expressive in his descriptions of the types of images seen in his
stories. The image of Berenices dead body through Egaeus eyes was morbidly descriptive and
rich with dark adjectives. Berenices body is steadily dehumanized during the part of the story in
which Egaeus suddenly remembers her dead body, coming out of his psychotic state of
monomania, and realizing what he had done to his poor cousin by ripping out her teeth and
keeping them as a treasure. Poe usually has a recurring theme of darkness and evil, strangely the
death of young, beautiful women is a prominent theme in the works of Poe: I ill of health, and
buried in gloom she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hillside (Poe Berenice 1). Poe is attempting to get his point across that the stereotype of the
beautiful girl and the ugly awkward boy could have some chemistry, family or not. This could be
Poes take on some happy ending, which is unusually rare. Coincidentally, readers could interpret
this story as it was most likely based off of Poes late wife who just happened to be his cousin,
and also so happened to die a few years before this was written. Though Poe succeeds in

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bringing the Dark Romantic category to the world of short stories as well, his poems still manage
to have the slightest sense of Dark Romanticism, as well.
Lastly, Edgar Allan Poe continues to maintain his image of being a writer of death and
evil, an explorer of the corruption that results from young minds exposed to evil early in their
youth. The poem of Lenore begins dark but has a surprisingly pleasant happy ending. Let the
bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; (Poe Lenore 2). In the end, we find that
the soul Poe is referring to is the soul of a beautiful young woman who has died. Finding beauty
in her death, he writes about Guy De Vere refusing to mourn the death of this young woman.
With no shock, Poes recurring theme of beautiful young women dying is present once again.
Though this story is still about death and loss, Poe gives his characters a happy ending for once
in his writing career: From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven (Poe
Lenore 29). On the rare occasion that Poe gives his characters happy endings, there is an
almost absolute possibility that the character will not be happy for long, or live long enough to
see their happiness through. This young woman seems to have such a painful death; death
rewards her by putting her out of her misery. Though this piece is an excerpt, the beautiful young
woman dies in a beautiful way, satisfying the reader in which this young woman finally gets a
happy ending to a pitiful life. Poe illustrates every aspect of the Dark Romantic category,
showing the beauty in the death of people, especially beautiful young people.
Through The Chimaera, by Nathaniel Hawthorne and both Berenice, and Lenore
by Edgar Allan Poe, these Dark Romantic authors demonstrate that a youthful mind has the
potential to be endlessly beautiful, but there are evils present in the world that can sabotage that
child-like innocence at any moment. Being a Dark Romantic means those writers not only has to
explore minds of their own but minds of everyone around them. This causes an array of mental

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illness among the dark romantic genre, a common theme in dark romantic literature and the
writers themselves. Dark Romanticism is a genre that is almost infamous among the literary
world, this is also a reason that it is so popular among literary audiences as well.

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Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Chimaera." readbookonline. N.p., 2011. Web. 6 Oct.
2015. <http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/11183/>.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Berenice - a Tale." eapoe.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/bernicea.htm>.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Lenore." poets.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2015.
<https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/lenore>.