Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

All the characters in the story are affected by old age. The guests feel that they lack life, and the narrator remarks, scathingly, that they should have already been in their graves. They have suffered from misfortunes and are “melancholy old creatures,” but we learn that their misfortunes were to some extent self-inflicted by having pursued the wrong things in life: Medbourne and Killigrew, respectively, pursued “frantic speculation” for riches and “the pursuit of sinful pleasures,” while Gascoigne is “a ruined politician” who is now forgotten (13). When presented with the opportunity to become young again, they are eager to do it. Dr. Heidegger is the only character in the story who appears to embrace his old age, “having had much trouble in growing old,” he says, and “in no hurry to grow young again” (18). The doctor reminds the guests of the shame of their pasts when he advises them to be mindful of their lifetimes of experience, stating, “What a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age” (18). Here, Dr. Heidegger implies that age is an advantage, yet the characters believe the opposite.