In the nineteenth century, individuality, personal growth, and imagination characterized the Romantic period. Writers of this period searched their souls for truth and expression. A subgenre of this time period was transcendentalism. Transcendentalists believed that nature was the closest thing to God and that people were born good. When Transcendentalism emerged, many people disagreed with the optimism of the Transcendentalists and these people believed more in the darkness and evil of humanity. These people became known as Dark Romantics. Dark romanticism has been seen in poems and short stories by some authors, such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe and Scarlet Letter and “The Minister's Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The works of these writers contrast with the perspective of the “Walden” of the romantic writer Henry David Thoreau. The Dark Romantics wanted the darkness of the people of their time period documented, as well as the optimism and positivity of the people of their time period. Edgar Allan Poe was a dark romantic through and through. All of his writings showed the dark minds and twisted psychology of the people of his time. “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe projects the darkness of the minds of the people who scrutinize this period. “…Leave my solitude intact! – stop busting over my door! Remove your beak from my heart and take your form from my door!” (Poe 286). The poem had the essence of a desolate man with no hope of happiness. In such loneliness and desperation, the narrator's mind drives him mad. He is believed to be talking to a crow who repeats "never again" to every question. The more questions the narrator asks, the more convoluted the raven's answer becomes. This piece of paper, The Age of Reason and Romanticism reflect humanity's times of darkness. Throughout the Puritan era, there was a very strong darkness in the Puritans' belief that God was a vengeful and defiant being. Dark Romanticism contrasted with the Age of Reason due to the rational thinking of this period where people rarely relied on emotions and instead relied on intellect and logic. The Romanticism period brought forth the subgenre of Dark Romanticism which really emphasized the darkness of previous time periods. Darkness in literature had been present since the early literary period of Puritanism, but was not greatly emphasized and incorporated into its genre until the Romantic period. Dark romance is widely used today in many novels, poems, short stories and even films. Although it may not be obvious, darkness peers all around us.