Antitranscendentalists

Antitranscendentalists

Do you know anyone who is destroying themselves and others by their actions? If so this person is an antitranscendentalist. Antitranscendentalism is a literary term to describe a character’s potential to do harm to themselves. Along with bringing harm to himself or killing himself, he usually brings harm to others in one form or another. Another characteristic of an antitranscendentalist character is that there is usually signs or clues that tell the character that he is destroying himself, but the character chooses the ignore the signs or clues. Abigail Williams from “The Crucible”, Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, and Roger Chillingworth from The Scarlet Letter are all antitranscendentalists. They all harmed themselves and others in one way or another.

Abigail Williams is an antitranscendentalist for many reasons. She brought harm to herself, the other girls in Salem, and innocent townspeople. Every time she accused someone of witchcraft or persuaded the other girls to so the same, she was hurting herself as well as the innocent person. Little did she know, that in the end everything would go against her and she would be the one in trouble with the law. Also she was putting her friends in harms way by threatening them if they didn’t keep their secret. When the girls didn’t tell the truth about them being frauds, it was getting them in even more trouble. Every time Abigail aided in the prosecution of an innocent towns person, that person was being harmed because they were most likely to be hung. Abigail knew that what she was doing was wrong, but she continued to do it. She ignored the signs and clues telling her that she was harming herself and others, which is a characteristic of an antitranscendentalist.

Not only did Abigail ignore these signs and clues but Captain Ahab from Moby Dick also did. Captain Ahab ended up dying and killing his crew at the end of the story. Captain Ahab had been obsessed with killing a white whale named Moby Dick. He spent almost his whole life trying to kill this whale and it was taking over his mind. He was destroying himself inside by obsessing over Moby Dick and in the end he practically killed himself. He also killed most of his crew from his ship. He persuaded them into helping him kill Moby Dick and the men went to extremes for Ahab. The crew also ended up dying and failed to capture the giant, white whale Moby Dick. Ahab knew subconsciously that what he was doing was going to kill him one day but he kept on doing it until it finally happened.

Ahab didn’t purposely bring harm to his shipmates but Roger Chillingworth from “The Scarlet Letter” did to Reverend Dimmesdale. Chillingworth was out to get revenge