The Musings Of A Romanticist - 1188 Words

The Musings of a Romanticist What does Romanticism do to a person? Does it, let uninhibited actions flow free, corrupting human morals? Or does it free the soul from the clutches of society? I thought that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s commentary on uniqueness was compelling. In the Scarlet Letter, he highlights the pros and cons of being yourself. In that, he shows how the lack of individualism can kill a person on the inside. Examples include Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale, both characters who had succumbed to becoming overwhelmingly different than the norm and yet tried to hide it, thus destroying their respective lives at the end of the book. Hester survives the ordeal through showing to the world proof of her romantic notions,†¦show more content†¦Let’s take the word, individuality. Parse it into two different words and you can get â€Å"indivi† and â€Å"duality.† By analyzing this, it’s shown that individuality is the duality of a person is indivi-sible. Individuality shows there is no way to distinguish the personality from the exterior they put out to cope with societal standards. This is the hallmark of what Romanticism means to me. The word individuality, it shows how a person can’t live in society without their own personal effects. That’s why I believe that expressing feelings is important, something that a person can’t live without. Hawthorne also expresses some of the same views as me, shown by the passage he wrote in his introduction The Custom House: Moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly,  ¬Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬â€making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility,—is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture on the wall;—all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. (Hawthorne 32) In this he represents the moonlight as the