Perfection and Naivety

I know the above image is quite large, but it is important to see the need and desire for the girl to achieve a perfect body. The above picture relates to the American Dream developing. Human nature to be perfect and the innocence that one can defeat death emerge in these stories. This girl wants to be perfect, no matter how skinny she gets she will not reach it, for it does not exist. Perfection does not exist.

In relation to Poe and Hawthorne, the two stories I read were "The Mask of the Red Death," and "The Birthmark." Both were very interesting stories written in a tragic sense. It is evident that the authors, Poe and Hawthorne, were now starting to write about human depravity and the idea of American innocence. Americans are starting to deviate from the Puritan norm and starting to write about the "fall of Eden." The quest for perfectionism and to escape death, two things that are not possible.
In "The Mask of the Red Death," the main character tries desperately to avoid a plague by hiding in his abbey with seven rooms. As he tries to evade death, death comes to him in the end and kills him instantly and first. One cannot be so naive to believe they can beat death. Prince Prospero locked himself in his abbey with a couple hundred people and locked the plague out. However, the plague still crept in and turned out to be a guest at the ball. His human nature was to evade this inevitable terror, but in the end, everyone succombs to death. Prospero made the crucial mistake of believing him smarter than this creature of death, but this gothic tale depicts the harsh truth of life. For a short further summary click here.
Then in "The Birthmark" it depicts the human instinct to strive for perfectionism. A man marries a beautiful woman who has a birthmark on her face. While men are pleased with her appearance, her husband grows more grotesque with her birthmark as each day passes. When the couple finally remove the birthmark, she instantly dies after she wakes up. The husband was able to have one moment of his wife's perfection, then lost her for good. He sacrificed a satisfying, loving life in order to achieve a perfection that simply was not possible. His nature of wanting his wife to be perfect was granted at a severe cost. While cutting out her birthmark, he cut out his wife's heart. The perfection was not love, but human depravity cost him his love. It showed him that he had all he needed and that his future was perfect right in front of him. For a different analysis with sexuality, click here.
These two concepts of human nature and innocence come crashing down in these authors' stories. Human nature is bad and deviates from God during this time and innocence has yet to be jaded.