<embed src="http://www.4shared.com/embed/644908918/2d5008a8" width="420" height="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed>
<embed src="http://www.4shared.com/embed/644908918/2d5008a8" width="420" height="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed>
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) An American writer. He spent his early years in Maine. An injury forced him to remain immobile for a considerable period, during which he developed an exceptional taste for reading and thinking. He attended Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825. His books The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables are classics of American Literature.
Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
Dr. Heidegger was an old man with a sad and tragic love story. One day he invited four of his friends over to persuade them to take part in an experiment he wanted to try. After sharing his love story, he showed them a dry rose he had kept for years which he used to prove to them that the water he had was from a “Fountain of Youth.” Convinced, the four friends drank it eagerly. Dr. Heidegger wanted to see if they had learned from their mistakes made in the past. At the end he realized that they hadn’t.
* Analyzing the story’s plot: conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution.
Plot: Dr. Heidegger invites four friends over to persuade them to take part in an experiment.
Conflict: To see if the water of the Fountain of Youth really works.
Rising Action: Dr. Heidegger´s friends think that what he is saying about the water is not possible.
Climax: The four friends become young again after drinking the water.
Resolution: The four friends start acting in a strange way and become old again.
* Analyzing the characters.
Dr. Heidegger: he was an old strange man who had been living his life in pain for losing the opportunity to be happy when he was young. He was interested in experimenting people’s behavior if given the opportunity to go back in time.
Mr. Medbourne: He was greedy and old. He was homeless because he hadn’t been smart enough at making business deals, which caused him to lose the fortune he once had.
Mr. Gascon: He was old and poor. He had a politician personality. He had also had an unfortunate life. He was a former convict for making the wrong choices in his past, he lived feeling ashamed.
Colonel Killigrew: He was old and sick. He had lived an unfortunate life for being an alcoholic and for not taking good care of his health.
Widow Wycherly: She was an old widow who had always had a very high opinion of herself, she was very conceited. Seeing herself old, with white hair and deep wrinkles made her feel very unfortunate.
* Identifying the moral or teaching of the story.
In my opinion the moral of the story is that saying things is not enough to make change possible. If you don’t truly change the negative aspects of your personality you can’t be a better person.
************************************************************
I really liked this story because the teaching that it gives us readers is meaningful. The fact that we should live the present -that we do have- the best possible way, being the best we can be in all aspects of life, to try hard to be genuinely happy so that when we are old we can look back and have no regrets whatsoever. I think that the irony in the story is that Dr. Heidegger was not willing to have the water, even though he had spent most of his life treasuring the memories of what could’ve been.
************************************************************
