Reason and Fantasy

I was struck the contrasting themes of reason and fantasy while reading James Hogg’s “Expedition to Hell” mostly because if you read the story with these two themes in mind I believe that you get an excellent mixture of the major influencing factors the  world that James Hogg lived in. In the story Hogg mixes in some of the popular scientific queries of the day such as the delving into what a dream really is with the more fantasy driven themes like demons and literally driving oneself into hell. The best scene or I suppose dialogue in the story that I can point to is when the doctor and George’s wife are discussing the situation with George himself. The doctor and Chirsty can plainly see that something is troubling her husband yet they approach his quandary with a reason driven approach rather than George, who sees his problem as one that is of a more supernatural one than reason. In the end the wife and doctor can make a logical reason for why George died but lack a means of knowing what it was that drove him into his state in the first place. This piece is to me an excellent representation of the time, reason and fantasy were still accepted but it nears the end of  the peaceful coexistence of the two ideas.