Module two essay Rappaccini\'s Daughter PDF

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Professor Watson HUM 3330 American Writers 21 January 2020 The Benefits of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is a work of writing that is still relevant to todays society, while some of the speech used may be older styled, much of the story is still relevant today, and if it’s thought about further, fits in with relationships of today. This short story deserves to remain in the American literature canon because it is as relevant today as it was when it was written, the story requires deeper thoughts to understand what’s actually going on and the meaning behind the use of many symbols, along with being able to resonate with the readers. The story is timeless and could happen today as it could have happened in the 15, 16, or 1700s, because there were controlling parents back then and there are toxic relationships today as well. The relevance “Rappaccini’s Daughter” has today includes how Giacomo Rappaccini rose his daughter ensuring that she will never be able to leave him, much like some parents today raise their children in a way that requires them to always stay home. Another relevant symbol that can be drawn is how being in toxic (poisonous) environments, even if you are someone “whom all the young men in Padua are wild about” because of their beauty, the environment around them can make that person toxic (poisonous) to be around as well (652). In the story Beatrice grew up around the poisonous plants in the garden, she “had been nourished with poison from her birth upward, until her whole nature was as imbued with them, that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence” (661). From Beatrice becoming poisonous she could only be around her father who understands her, who ultimately rose her to be forced to stay with him. In today’s world there are children that are raised in poisonous households, that make sure

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they cannot ever leave and make it, this is why some children live with their parents well into adulthood because they are unable to get jobs and have a family because of how they were raised. Another relevance today includes Giacomo Rappaccini’s obsession with science, how “he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own amount the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard-seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge” (652). This is relevant today in that if you only focus on one goal too heavily, you can ultimately stop valuing human life and only want to reach a goal, the opposite of how researchers and doctors are allowed to be, they cannot purposely sacrifice human life in order to learn more. In how Rappaccini treats his daughter as an experiment, along with his other patients, are reminders from the past how human life must be protected at all cost today, that the ends do not justify the means if it results in loss of human life. If human life is lost today, depending on the circumstances, credentials to practice can be taken away, in cases that death could have been prevented and at times even jail time can occur. The most apparent symbol in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is the garden in which Rappaccini’s daughter Beatrice is entrapped in, being the only place outside the house she can enter. A way that the garden can be better viewed as almost a prison is when the old dame talked to Giovanni saying, “There is a private entrance into the garden!” (656). This makes the garden viewed more as a prison because it indicates there is no obvious way into the garden, and typically gardens are not locations that are meant to be difficult to find a way into, that someone who has been around a while would be the only one to know about it apart from the Rappaccini’s, however it seems indicated that this private entrance of theirs is not used by them.

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More indication that the garden was more of a prison, even if she could get out of it technically, she asks her father “wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon thy child?” indicating that he doomed her to remain there in the garden forever, due to her poisonous self (666). Even though Giovanni is with her now, both Giovanni and Beatrice cannot leave because as Rappiccini said, “Pluck one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub, and bid thy bridegroom wear it in his bosom. It will not harm him now! My science, and the sympathy between thee and him, have so wrought within his system, that he now stands apart from common men, as though dost, daughter of my pride and triumph, from ordinary women” meaning that Giovanni is unable to leave the poisonous garden either, because if he were to leave anyone around him for a unknown period of time would die (666). The only way for Beatrice to truly leave the garden, and her father’s side is through death, “where the evil, which though hast striven to mingle with my being, will pass away like a dream-like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden” (666). What makes “Rappaccini’s Daughter” so great is its ability to transcend time, being relevant long past the time it was written. This is through the way Beatrice was raised to never be allowed to leave, through the symbol of the poison in Beatrice’s body that no one can live around unless they are poisoned as well. This is truly like a love story between a man and a woman where the woman is raised to be toxic to others so no one will take her away from her father, but if someone chooses to succumb to their beauty, they will become toxic as well, and unable to live in regular society, but rather be forced to stay with the woman and her father who never wanted her to leave.

Work Cited

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Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini's Daughter.” The Northern Anthology of American Literature, 6th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2003, pp. 648–667....