Comparing Poe's Eldorado 'And Wizard Of Oz'

In the area of achieving goals, sometimes even the most confident people have to reevaluate what it is they are seeking. Along the way, one may realize what they sought out to find does not even truly matter in the grand scheme of life. Arthur Ashe once said, “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” In life, sometimes one must have help seeing the true beauty of the journey may be greater than the end result. The theme of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Eldorado” is presented through the knight, who changes from a character yearning for materialistic treasure to the realization that the seeking is more valuable than the riches. Eldorado means golden in the Spanish language, and in many, cultures the

Once Poe’s Knight begins to realize that he will never find Eldorado, the mood of “Eldorado” shifts from the upbeat attitude to one of gloom. As the poem continues on, the knight realizes his Eldorado is not so much “to slay a dragon and take its treasure, or to go off to California and get rich” (Shadow of Iris), but instead to have a relevant existence. For example, in L. Frank Baum’s “Wizard of Oz” each of the individual characters are seeking a specific goal, but, on the journey, they each prove to themselves that they had these abilities all along.(Shadow of Iris) Just like the Scarecrow and Poe’s knight, people are looking for a meaning and purpose in their lives. Finding the buried treasure, or whatever is sought, may or may not give the contentment that is earned as much as having a goal to seek. The journey to find corporeal characteristics or having the loot in the knight’s hands is not what keeps these characters pursuing this path; it is the journey to

He also explains that the proposed goals are directly related to their attitudes and behaviors. Task-involvement is when the person’s main state is to better their own knowledge of a particular skill or understanding, and often has more “challenging attributions and increasing effort”. (Rabideau) On the other hand, ego-involvement person’s main goal is to “demonstrate superior abilities and to outperform others”. (Rabideau) The type of a goal setter that the knight was would be an example of task-involvement. Task-involvement individuals are not necessarily concentrating on achieving the goal, but on learning the actual skills needed to complete the task. The main objective with this is to, “gain a better understating of their self-capacity.”(Rabideau) When the knight is getting close to death, he encounters “This Pilgrim Shadow”(Poe 15) who gives the grieving knight a purpose again. It explains, “The real meaning of the quest is not the goal, but the quest itself.” (Shadow of Iris) The shadow not only tells the knight to continue his quest, but mentions a more difficult journey that will help him find the Eldorado he was