Anti Transcendentalism Similarities

Anti-Transcendentalism vs Transcendentalism The writings of anti-transcendentalist authors, like Poe or Hawthorne, have a few obvious differences from the writings by transcendentalist authors, like Emerson and Thoreau, including differences in the mood and the way nature is depicted. All the stories by the anti-transcendentalists are characterized by their dark, cynical mood. For example, Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” is about a man who traps his friend inside a tomb and leaves him to die. Not only does this story have a disturbing plot, it is also full of dark, creepy imagery, like the description of the setting inside the crypt. Poe says that the crypt’s “walls had been lined human remains” and “bones had been thrown down,

Nature plays an important role in the transcendentalists’ writings, since they believe nature has a sort of magic to it. As mentioned before, in the essay Nature, Emerson talks about an “occult relation” he has with nature. He says that when he is in nature he “casts off his years” and he uses a metaphor to compare himself to a “transparent eyeball”. In Walden, nature is seen as a place one can escape from materialistic society. On the other hand, in the anti-transcendentalists’ writings, there is by no means an idea that nature is a divine, magical place. In “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge”, nature cruelly tricks the protagonist into thinking he is escaping, when really he is dying. In “Rappaccini's Daughter”, the author describes a garden full of lethally poisonous flowers, which depicts nature as something dangerous. While the transcendentalists portray nature as a place of wonder and magic, the anti-transcendentalists believe that nature is something indifferent and unfriendly. This large difference, combined with the difference in the moods of their stories, give the transcendentalists and anti-transcendentalists their opposing