Rapaccini's Daughter - Ambiguous Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter is a gothic novel and a contrasted quasi-allegory with a plethora of ambiguous meanings. As Hawthorne identifies in the previous quote, this story is a clear parallel to the story of Original Sin. The problem, therefore, lies in representation. Who plays Adam and Eve? Who is Satan and who is God? At first glance it is easy to assume that the two lovebirds, Giovanni and Beatrice, are Adam and Eve; while the black-cloaked Beatrice's father is Satan, and God is an omniscient overseer, represented in nature, or entirely absent from history. However, Hawthorne begins the endless possibilities of role assignment by suggesting that Beatrice's father, the diabolical scientist Rapaccinni, might be Adam. "It was strangely frightening to the young man's imagination to see this air of insecurity in a person who cultivated a garden, that simplest and most innocent of human toils, and who had been the joy and toil of the unfallen parents of the race, was was this garden the Eden of the present world - and this man, with such a perception of harm in what his own hands had grown, was he the Adam?" (1232) Hawthorne's "Rapaccini's Daughter" is a gothic novel and a contrasted quasi-allegory with a plethora of ambiguous meanings. As Hawthorne identifies in the previous quote, this story is a clear parallel to the story of Original Sin. The problem, therefore, lies in representation. Who plays Adam and Eve? Who is Satan and who is God? At first glance it is easy to assume that the two lovebirds, Giovanni and Beatrice, are Adam and Eve; while the black-cloaked Beatrice's father is Satan, and God is an omniscient character... middle of paper... an evil character like Iago and can simultaneously be compared to a type of Christ. "The Daughter of Rappaccini" contrasts nature to science. Rappaccini and Baglioni are scientists, Giovanni studies it and Beatrice is its victim. Nature, in its romantic form, does not exist in this story. Rappaccini's garden is as natural as walking into the plastic flower section of a craft store and commenting on the bold colors and illustrious blooms. It may look magnificent from the window of John's mansion, but it was made by man, not nature. Rappaccini takes "nature" one step further by creating something as natural and pure as life, twisted and synthetic. Nature has become perverse and distorted by science. Works Cited: Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Rappaccini's Daughter, included in the Heath Anthology of American Literature; Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, 1998.