Wakefield by: Nathaniel Hawthore and Sphinx Without a Secret by:Oscar Wilde - Essay Example

Romanticism an intellectual movement that is characterized by individual freedom away from social conventions and this freedom that leads to human imagination in all fields. Hawthornes short stories can be read as allegories which have been influenced by his Puritan background. Edgar Allan Poe said “The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective-wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes”. The human personality is like a congregation of chemical reactions wherein every individual has the capacity to be unpredictable and essentially enigmatic.

‘Wakefield’, represents an unusual issue that is awakened and discussed. Wakefield a man of whims and fancies suddenly considers the idea of leaving his wife only to reside secretly for twenty years in his neighborhood. Hawthorne analysis’s the motives that would have impelled Wakefield to commit such a powered act. So imagine Wakefield a married man living a comfortable life for ten years. Wakefield can be characterized as a person who has an ‘inactive mind’, a certain ‘vanity’ combined with ‘a harmless love of mystery’ that envisions ‘selfishness’ and ‘strangeness’.

This person one day makes a decision in his mind, bids farewell to his wife who does not inquire into the details of his departure and leaves only to move into another place slightly away from his present location. Weird! Portrayal of instability and insanity combined with the uncertainty of selfhood and the fear of loosing his individualistic place in the world. “What sort of a man was Wakefield?” “His mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings, that ended to no purpose, or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so energetic as to seize hold of words.

” (Hawthorne, 1835) Therefore Wakefield’s vacant and unproductive mind is the cause of his state for