American Literature / Unit 8 AML 0731 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Telling Poe From Hawthorne From Melville
The idea
The three are the period's most confused trio and three tests separate them. The first is where the trouble comes from: in Poe it comes from inside a single disordered mind and the story is usually told by that mind; in Hawthorne it is inherited, from a family, a town or a religious past; in Melville it is built into the universe or the institution, and no one is exactly to blame. The second is the length of the leash: Poe's tales are tight, short and engineered for one effect, Hawthorne's are moral fables of middle length that hold their symbol steady, and Melville's expand, digress and swallow whole essays. The third is the ending: Poe closes the design, Hawthorne closes with a judgment left ambiguous, and Melville closes without resolution at all. Ask who the trouble belongs to, and the author usually follows.
In practice
Inside a mind, inherited, or built into the world.
Where people slip
All three write first-person narrators with unreliable views, so voice alone decides nothing. The test is the location of evil, which is exactly the question the dark Romantics were arguing about.
Your place on the trail
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