BA English Short Story'Rappaccini Daughter' Summary and questions answers

Rappaccini s' Daughter 

 Nathanial Hawthorne

Nathanial Hawthorne is  an American writer and novelist. He is regarded as one of the
America s' representative novelists. Rappaccini s' Daughter" is one of his famous short
stories..This story is a fantasy in which we come across a scientist who cares more for
science than for mankind. He is ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of adding his
scientific knowledge. He is so much possessed by the scientific studies that he is devoid
of his humanity. Such  a selfish attitude ha s put all his scientific research to a wrong
direction.
Rappaccini is a famous scientist. He develops a scientific formula by which certain
poisons  are infiltrated in his daughter s' system which makes her immune  to all sorts
of poison but at the same time they make her deadly poisonous whose very touch kills
the  touched. Unaware of this fact a student Giovanni falls in love with her and is
doomed
Dr. Rappaccini has a garden of plants. It was said that he made medicines from those
plants which were as powerful as magic. Giovanni saw this garden from the window of
his room.He saw many strange type of plants growing there. There was also a pool in
the middle of the garden. and many strange plants with large leaves grew around the
pool. There was bush with purple flowers set in a stone jar in the middle of the pool.

 Its
flowers were as beautiful as jewels. Soon he saw a tall, sickly looking man taking care of
the plants. He was dressed in black. He examined each plant with great care but he did
not touch any of them. It looked as if he was working among poisonous creatures. He
even avoid the direct breathing of their smells. He went near the bush with purple
flowers but was afraid to going too near. He called his daughter, Beatrice and asked her
to take care of the plan. She embraced the plant and breathed its smell without any fear
which surprised Giovanni.

Points to remember:

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne born in 1804 and died in 1864 was an American  short story writer
2. This short story was first published in 1844.
3. It is a fairy tale, a fantasy, a science fiction
4. The story projects a conflict between good force and evil force
5. The story is about a young beautiful maiden Beatrice, daughter of a botanic scientist Giacomo Rappaccini
6. The professor is a very callous and cruel ,he even puts his daughter s’ life at risk in order to add his scientific knowledge
7. The short story also tells us about the deadly consequences of man s’ attempt of changing human s’ nature
8. Love is the basic need of every human, one cannot resist it
9. Rappaccini grows a garden of poisonous plants and he tends his daughter to look after this garden
10. She also becomes poisonous and poison becomes her life element
11. Unaware of all these facts ,Giovanni a young fellow who comes Padua University for study purposes, falls in love with her
12. Giovanni observes that Beatrice has some terrible qualities, her breath kills flying insects
13. His regular meetings with her make him poisonous
14. Prof. Baglioni ,a well-wisher ,gives him antidote to remove effects of poison from Beatrice
15. Beatrice takes that antidote and dies instantly, his father experiments 

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