Immortality In 'Dr. Heidegger's Experiment' By Nathaniel Hawthorne

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If one cannot accept the impossibility of immortality they can never be happy knowing they will continue aging. This theme is clearly shown in “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” by Nathaniel Hawthorne when he refers to his four guests saying, “Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine.” While being young can feel like the greatest thing in the world, it is meant to be fleeting, and this is proven by how the characters react to the feeling of the water despite not believing it. As the guests continue drinking the water, they go back to past mistakes like, “ ‘My dear widow, you are charming!’ cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed …show more content…
Before giving the guests the water Hawthorne says, “Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!’” This shows that people could do great things if they take their experience from the past and use their knowledge to make better decisions, but people can also disregard their knowledge and repeat mistakes. Once the four guests are young they start to act the age they appear, “Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all” (Hawthorne). This shows that the guests did not learn from their mistakes and let their feelings of youth guide them. They did not think of what had or could happen because of their experience. Lastly, Hawthorne states, “But the doctor’s four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.” While there is always the option to learn from your mistakes, there is also the option to repeat them as the friends did. With great use of character, Hawthorne shows that people have the option to make better decisions if they learn from past
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