what is the main theme of dr heidegger's experiment

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment Themes

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Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

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Youth and Old Age

All the characters in the story are affected by old age. The guests feel that they lack life, and the narrator remarks, scathingly, that they should have already been in their graves. They have suffered from misfortunes and are “melancholy old creatures,” but we learn that their misfortunes were to some extent self-inflicted by having pursued the wrong things in life: Medbourne and Killigrew, respectively, pursued “frantic speculation” for riches and “the pursuit of sinful pleasures,” while Gascoigne is “a ruined politician” who is now forgotten (13). When presented with the opportunity to become young again, they are eager to do it. Dr. Heidegger is the only character in the story who appears to embrace his old age, “having had much trouble in growing old,” he says, and “in no hurry to grow young again” (18). The doctor reminds the guests of the shame of their pasts when he advises them to be mindful of their lifetimes of experience, stating, “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” (18). Here, Dr. Heidegger implies that age is an advantage, yet the characters believe the opposite. The dichotomy of youth versus old age in the story causes the characters to be at odds with themselves.

The water of youth is a metaphor for life, as the characters are reborn physically and spiritually when they drink it. However, adolescents, especially children, are known to be naïve and careless, and when the water of youth unburdens the guests from the troubles of their lives, they quickly forget what they know about life and about their years of repentance. Not only do they become naïve, but they also grow indistinct. They lose their individuality: “Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all” (23). To be a fully characterized person, it seems, is the benefit (and perhaps the burden) of adulthood; extreme old age, like extreme youth, is characterized by mutual assimilation.

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As their youthful vigor returns, the guests repeat exactly the errors of their first youth. Furthermore, when they are once again restored to old people, they have no remorse this time; they decide instead to do whatever it takes to find the source of the Fountain of Youth so that they can drink from it as much as they want. If old age is the province of wisdom, the guests prefer to be foolish youths forever rather than remember the pain of their lives. Only Dr. Heidegger insists he would never “stoop to bathe my lips in” the waters of the fountain (28). It is also worth noting that the narrator calls the effect of the water on the guests—at the end of the story—a “delirium.”

Humans Versus Nature

“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” explores the theme of humans versus nature in two ways. First, Dr. Heidegger’s experiment itself, situated as it is in terms not only of science but also of magic (remember the big, leather-bound book of magic in the study), draws on the trope of the scientist—or magician—attempting to exert domination over the natural world. Heidegger has come into possession, he says, of the rare waters of the Fountain of Youth, which is located in far-off Florida and is the object of Ponce de León’s desire. It is significant, too, in this regard that Ponce de León was a 16th-century Spanish conquistador interested in dominating North America on behalf of the Spanish crown.

While the character of Heidegger is rather more ambiguous than overtly sinister, he is clearly meant to recall those other German men of science, Frankenstein and Doctor Faustus. Heidegger is interested in observing the others as they undergo what the narrator calls the “delirium” induced by the water, but he himself will not take it.

The second way the story explores the theme of humans versus nature is through the guests. They are characterized as “gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures” (19) who seek to drink the water of youth to turn back the clock on their age. The guests were under nature’s control; now, the water of youth gives them the chance to take back control of time. After drinking the water, “they fanc[y] that some magic power ha[s] really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving in their brows” (20). Old age, the water of youth, the seasons, and Dr. Heidegger’s rose are all symbols of nature in the story. The experiment takes place on a summer day, and summer symbolizes the peak of the seasons, mirroring the “peak” of age in which the guests sought to be by drinking the water of youth.

At the end of the story, Hawthorne analogizes the guests’ experience to that of nature with the image of a dead butterfly that had by chance been revived by some of the water of youth. He writes, “The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger” (26). Ironically, the four old guests, too, had “grown old in the decline of summer” though they had been affected by the water of youth.

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Ultimately, the guests do not conquer nature. The doctor is an ambiguous character whose actions are at least questionable. These facets of the story suggest that Hawthorne understood that humans are not, ultimately, in control of nature and that it is dangerous to believe otherwise. The ending of the story suggests that Hawthorne felt humans should admire or embrace nature rather than attempt to correct it. The lesson that Heidegger says he learns at the end, “If the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it,” stands in contrast to the “lesson” learned by the guests, who resolve instead to “make a pilgrimage to Florida” to find the Fountain of Youth (28). With the passage of time, the effects of the water wear off—just like actual youth and human life, which do not last forever.

Good and Evil

From the beginning, it’s clear the story is interested in moral themes. The guests are all described in terms of their past misfortunes, which are linked to their missteps. Dr. Heidegger , who is described as a “strange old gentleman” (16), also has a checkered past. In all cases, their pasts trouble them. The narrator says, “I will merely hint, that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves; as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woeful recollections.” The doctor, when he was young, gave a medicinal potion to his fiancé, and she died from taking it on the night before their wedding. The narrator further discloses that there were stories about Dr. Heidegger and his study, but they were “fables” (16), whereas the stories about the guests were deemed true.

The experiment itself raises the question: Did Dr. Heidegger have good or evil intentions? Dr. Heidegger uses magic, or an illusion , to draw his four guests into partaking in the experiment, leading them to commit sins against themselves. The guests are presented with a choice: to believe or not believe the illusion. The four guests are similar in that they share the same qualities and desires; they have committed sins in their youth, and they wish they weren’t old anymore. Their curiosity about Dr. Heidegger’s experiment coupled with the idea that the water of youth works tempts the guests to find out if their youth can “bloom again” (17). Prior to knowing that the water in which Dr. Heidegger dropped his “rose of half a century” (17) was from the Fountain of Youth, the four guests did not believe the doctor’s “pretty deception” (17). However, because they all despise their old age and find it possible that they could bloom again like Dr. Heidegger’s rose , they choose to drink the water of youth for themselves.

Eventually, they are so overwhelmed by its effects that they want more. Dr. Heidegger had cautioned the guests to be wise while drinking the water of youth, which suggests that he might have wanted the guests to overcome their misery. But, because Dr. Heidegger continued to give them more of the water of youth, it seems unlikely that he intended a good outcome for the experiment. It is also worth mentioning that Hawthorne seems to imply that good is synonymous with reality and evil is synonymous with deception. Overall, it is ambiguous whether Dr. Heidegger’s experiment was meant to be good or evil, and the only person who learns from it is the doctor himself. The guests do not learn from the illusion; instead, they continue the path of temptation. The friends don’t appreciate their age and thus cannot appreciate the wisdom of their experience. As a result, they cannot recognize nor make amends with their sins.