In many of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, he creates characters with either a malicious or evil feature to relay to the reader a more allegorical meaning. In the story Rappaccini's Daughter he uses Beatrice as a carrier of the deadly poison. In Young Goodman Brown, Faith is the character that is lost to the Devil. In viewing each of the characters in Rappaccini's Daughter, I am led to believe that none of the characters are evil; instead it is the elements within the story that are evil.
             Giovanni wasn't an evil man; all he wanted was to continue his studies at the University of Padua (1286). Evil came to Giovanni, an evil that came in the form of a beautiful woman. The first glimpse of evil that Giovanni stumbled upon was in the form of a beautiful garden. "The water, however, continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man's window, and made him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song unceasingly, and without heeding the vicissitudes around it" (1287). This was much different than in Young Goodman Brown where evil was found in a dark, dreary forest. Giovanni's first encounter with evil was in no way devilish or ugly, it was stunning. Beatrice was as beautiful as evil is ugly. Giovanni glanced into the garden and "Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of flowers, beautiful as the day, and with bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy"(1288-1289).
             Beatrice, like Giovanni, wasn't evil. She had been infused with poison since her birth. This poison, deadly to all others, is like her sister. Unfortunately, because it is deadly, Beatrice too becomes harmful at no fault of her own. For this reason,...