How is nature addressed in these narratives and what kind of charateristics of the Romantic hero are displayed?
mwestwood Teacher Community / Jr. College eNotes Editor ‘Hark ye yet again–the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event–in the loving act, the doubted deed–there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the White Whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the White Whale agent, or be the White Whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.’ These words of Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick” could just as easily be said by the narrator of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” For, “That inscrutable thing is chiefly what” the narrator hates as he ki
