Hermeneutic Gaps In Hawthorne's And Poe's Stories + Time And Place Settings In Douglas And Beecher Stowe

Explain the hermeneutic gaps to be found in “Young Goodman Brown” and in “The Masque of the Red Death.” See A Study Guide for American Literature to 1900, page 99.


A hermeneutic gap, or an information gap, is a narrative technique made for the readers to detect enigmas or unanswered questions throughout a story; enigmas that make the reader intrigued. This will search for clues all along thetext, sometimes to find the answer (temporary gap) and sometimes he/she will remain puzzled before the uncertainty (permanent gap).

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s and Edgar Allan Poe’s stories follow, more or less, the pattern that most short tales do: there is an exposition, a rising action, a climax, a falling action and a resolution, and everywhere there are gaps, either temporary or permanent, tobe found.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, already in the first paragraph, there are several information gaps: what is the purpose of his journey? We will know later on that his purpose is of evil nature (line 31) but that will be about it.
Why does Faith, his wife, want him to stay? Does she know something he/the reader does not know? Later on, in Goodman Brown states: “What awretch am I; to leave her on such an errand” (line 25) – At this point, the reader is already engaged.
As the tale goes on, more characters appear, being the most important one that of “his fellow-traveller” (line 66). The reader faces then a temporary gap. There will be clues about his identity from line 60 to 63, in a clear reference to the Bible: “But the only thing about him, that could be fixedupon as remarkable, was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake (…)”. He will be later referred to as “he of the serpent” (line 71). His identity will eventually be revealed as the Devil.
The story becomes rather confuse during the ritual Young Goodman Brown takes part into. Again, the questions arise: What is the aim of this ritual? Is it real? Is it a dream or a vision?(lines 419-422). If so, why does he have this vision? These questions present a hermeneutic gap. The reader knows that after his night in the forest he had changed forever, but the reader will never find out the answer, all he/she can do is speculate about it.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death starts in medias res – the reader does not know where the plague of the Red Death started, howit evolved, how it is transmitted… and the uncertainty continues in the second paragraph, where the character of Prince Prospero appears for the first time, but with no other information about his persona.
As the story deepens in the description of the castle and its rooms, especially the black chamber (lines 66-71), the reader asks himself/herself why if the Prince Prospero was so gentle andnice, had decorated this room in such gloomy way.
The “gigantic clock of ebony” (line 74) plays an important role in the plot. It helps increase the unease in the reader. If the clock is so disturbing every time it chimes, why is it there? In the Masquerade, as it strikes twelve, the masked figure makes its appearance, out of the blue. What is the connection between the clock and the mysteriousguest? Being made clear that this guest is the personification of the Red Death, how did he get into the castle, if it was supposed to be a safe place? And moreover, why?
As the reader myself, all these questions arose and I could not find an answer in the text. Poe had no intention of relieving the reader’s curiosity, writing a text riddled with permanent hermeneutic gaps.




Discuss the placeand time settings of the excerpts you have read from the works of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe. See A Study Guide for American Literature to 1900, pages 130-33.


Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stone belonged to the American Romanticism and cultivated the Slave narrative, he as a freed slave himself; she as an abolitionist raised in a family of social reformers.
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