Dr.+Heidegger's+Experiment

Short Stories - Literary Devises Title:__Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_____

Point of View: First Person (they are ingected into the story using "I" but are not actually there (seems to be told as if this happened in the past and someone told the narrator this story), Limited Omniscient

Protagonist: Dr. Heidegger What type of character is the Protagonist? Round, Dynamic

Antagonist: Himself

Describe the setting Place: A study filled with mysterious knick knacks and heavy, dark, intricate period furniture. Time: A summer afternoon transitioning to evening, 19th century Mood/Atmosphere: Friendly, cozy. In the climax it seems to get a little darker and more volatile, but you get the sense that they are all comfortable friends.

Type of Conflict: Man vs. Himself

Describe the main conflict: Dr. Heidegger wants to test his hypothesis/ do his experiment with the help of a few selected friends who have not had the most prvilidged of lives. He wanted to observe whether these people, who hadn't had the most fortunate of pasts, would repeat their mistakes if given youth once again. The friends use the elixer greedily once they recognise its power and become drunken with the effervescent liquid, unknowing that it is merely a short-lived illusion.

Describe the Climax of the Story: The climx is when the four friends of the Doctor are frolicking in their newfound "youth" when it creates tension as they fight over Widow Wycherly, become violent and break the vase containing the precious water and spilling it all over the floor.

How does the Protagonist change over the course of the story? His hypothesis is proved by the results, and so his decision is made. At first he is does not want to drink the water, but still wants to see what it will do. He sees what effect the water had on his friends and concluded that he did not want that to happen to him. He saw that the novelty of youth made them selfish of their newfound "youth" and mocking of the agedness they had so recently been victims of. He recognizes that this is dangerous to partake in.

Describe the relationship between the title and the theme. I think the title is a metaphor for how life and aging itself is an experiment. The example of the experiment in the story is testing whether you can recapture youth with an illusion or placebo.

How does the main conflict help to illustrate the theme? The conflict is one between youth inside you and the external age, personified in the story by how they want youth returned to them so badly that they believe this lie, and it makes them delusional so that they taunt they old man whos position they were just in.

How does the climax help to illustrate the theme? They destroy the thing that keeps them young by reverting back to their old ways, proving the futility of thying to 'turn back the clock' and the thinking that perhaps the 'youth is wasted on the young' because maybe we are doomed to repeat our mistakes.

Give examples of each of the following literary terms in the story (use quotes):

Simile: "with a visage as faded as her dress."

Metaphor: "Age, with its miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream from which they had joyously awoke."

Personification: "...as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber."

Symbol:  The butterfly, symolizing the friends of the doctor how they grow old, become young again from the elixer, and then die"...moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly throught the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger." "While he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the Doctor's snowy head, and fell upon the floor." The rose, as a symbol of his love for Sylvia and his understanding that you can't recapture the past. " 'I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness,' observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips."

Foreshadowing (give both elements): "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again." "She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed vanished." " 'It is a circumstance worth mentioning, that each of these three old gentleman, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoinge, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake.' " Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercly at each other's throats."

Irony: " 'Think what a sin and a shame it would be, if with you peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!' The Doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except for a feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea, that, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again." (Dramatic Irony/Forshadowing: the doctor warns them that they might repeat their past mistakes but they are so eager to get youth returned to them that they forget that not repeating history is difficult.)

Imagery: "the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from teh surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds." "It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled with ancient dust." Describe the relationships between the class theme and the story. The experiment shows that no matter how hard we try, our human instincts still remain even after we have experiences to teach us lessons, we can't go back for a re-do, all we can do is apply it to our lives right now and teach others.

Response Questions:

1. According to Dr. Heidegger, he wanted to do this experiment to test whether or not people would repeat their life's mistakes or learn from their experiences. He used the results to conclude that he did not want to partake in that because he didn't want to repeat his own mistakes.

2. They were all people who had wasted their lives doing bad things and they are now wizened and bitter. They are all eager to continue in the drinking of the liquid. Widow Wicherly was vain and pondered her appearance in the mirror, Mr. Gascoinge babbled about politics, the Colonel behaved drunkenly singing silly songs and staring at the Widow, while Mr. Medbourne was schemeing to make profits off of a new elaborate money-making scheme.

3. He would not 'stoop' (lower himself to doing it) to drink because he knows from seeing his friends that drinking the water would make him to not be himself; he learned his lesson that he would be doomed to make his mistakes again. His friends obvoisly think it is a great thing to do, since they plan to go off in search of more after their supply is gone.

4. The narrator is involved in the story (first person) but is not in the room interacting with the charachters. It seems as though this was a story that was regaled to him by Dr. Heidegger because he doesn't seem too biased and he maybe isn't too sure of his facts of the story because of this.

5. It seems to say that being youthful is all in the mind, and that youth is perhaps not completly wasted on the young because at least we are not bitter enough yet about our lot in life to ignore the lessons we have learned from our experiences as the people in the story do.

7. I think it would be desierable because if it were a vaccine, then all of your family and friends could live longer with you and you would still have the fear of death to make life exciting, but you would still get the benefit of having a long time to explore everything you wanted to experience. The cycle of life would also still be balanced because you would eventually die to avoid overpopulation, the cycle would just be a little slower.

COMPLETION 5/5

EFFORT 5/5

CONTENT 5/5

QUESTIONS 12/12

TOTAL 27/27