A Study Guide for Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535822138

Book preview

10

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1837

Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story Dr. Heidegger's Experiment is a horror story in the Gothic mode. In it, a mysterious doctor invites four old acquaintances to his study and offers them a sample of water from the fabled Fountain of Youth. The contents of the doctor's study are familiar to fans of horror movies and books: Hawthorne tells of a book of magic, a talking bust, and a mirror that shows dead people. A large portrait shows the doctor's fiancée, who died the night before their wedding, fifty years earlier. There is even a real skeleton in a closet, a not-so-subtle hint that the shared history of the old people to whom Dr. Heidegger offers a second chance at life might hold the seeds of their destruction.

This story was first published anonymously under the title The Fountain of Youth in 1837 in Knickerbocker magazine. Later the same year, it was reprinted with the current title in Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, which has remained one of the most important works of the American literary tradition, just as Hawthorne has retained his place as one of the most important American writers. In the 1860 edition of that book, Hawthorne felt compelled to add a note explaining that he had not plagiarized this story from similar ideas in a novel by Alexandre Dumas, best remembered today as the author of The Three Musketeers. In his postscript, Hawthorne points out that the story had originally been published long before Dumas's novel, and he slyly implies that Dumas often helped himself to other writers' ideas.

Twice-Told Tales is still in print from several publishers, most notably in the 2001 Modern Library edition.

Author Biography

Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the town his family had lived in for generations. At his birth, his last name was spelled Hathorne; later in life, he changed it to distance himself from an ancestor, John Hathorne, who was one of the judges at the infamous Salem witch trials. His father, a ship captain, died of yellow fever in Dutch Guiana when Nathaniel was four years old, and his mother and the two children moved in with relatives. Hawthorne broke his foot playing ball when he was nine. He spent nearly two years recuperating, during which time he read and began to write.

Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College, and after graduating in 1825