midterm reflection

The story “Connecticut” is a very artistic preview of romanticism; Eugene Walter has beautifully portrayed the significance of love and compassion of the characters towards nature. The writer has the mettle of hemming the very strong attitude of romanticism into the details of the tale. Symbols like the garden and the cat used in the story have added more potential and aesthetics to the idea of the story. The sketch revolves around an alone woman who has lost her husband and has a pet cat whom she got one day on her way named Barbarossa. Garden in the story symbolizes the character’s plunge from pleasure and love to the gloominess whereas the cat again takes her to bliss and contentment. This character symbolizes the idea of the romantic moment which has started at the end of the 18th century when several romantic authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Eugene Walter, and Nathaniel Hawthorne have helped their writings with the connection of nature and human psychology. Basically, loneliness and isolation have commenced the thought of writings based on romanticism, the fine points which can interpret the story more particularly especially, the love for nature when the Character was with her husband, that how she enjoyed the strong connection with nature while being with him. Again the cat Barbarossa symbolizes nature and took her towards optimism and cheerfulness. Presenting significance to the sentiments and perception over rationale is the uniqueness of American Romanticism. It avoids the outer pretense of the society and people and puts more reliance on internal understandings of the things. American romanticism favors the medieval over the orthodox which was the reaction of the age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century. Romantics were so skeptical of the world and tend to believe that the bond to nature is spiritually and morally healthy.

 

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References

WALTER, E. (1959). CONNECTICUT. The Transatlantic Review, (1), 59-65.