"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them (Kahlil Gibran). Nathanial Hawthorne came from a family of wrong doings from the Salem witch trials. "He saw this evil as a force that leaves marks on generation after generation (211). To change this for him, he gave himself a new identity, which he could mold and create to his liking. He had many "dark years where he wrote many of his stories about solitude and isolation. Poe was brought up in a family of high statue, always striving for love and acceptance. Poe wrote, "The want of parental affection has been the heaviest of my trials (134). He was without emotional stability looking for a world elsewhere. Therefore he uses this world he has created, incorporating it into many of his stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher and poems like "The Raven.
In comparing and contrasting Poe and Hawthorne, we come across their use of nature, moods, and color. Poe and Hawthorne both focus on nature and the way they differ is by using nature to manipulate different things. For example, in the story of "Goodman Brown, Hawthorne uses nature to manipulate religion. Brown strays away from his Faith figuratively and literally. "My love and my faith, this one night I must tare away from thee (87). He leaves his wife and his beliefs behind to follow the devil into
the woods of evil and darkness. Goodman Brown cried out, "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come devil; for to thee is the world given (94). Poe on the other
hand uses nature to manipulate people's rationality like in the story "The Tell-Tale Heart. The man was letting the eye of this old man turn him from good and to the loss of his stability and actions to think. He said, "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees “ very gradually “ I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever