Jing-mei’s mother decides she wants Jing-mei to try her hand at being a pianist. When Jing-mei learned of this decision she was highly upset. “ When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell” (Tan 453). Jing-mei’s reference to “hell” expresses her angst toward her mother’s decision. Jing-mei’s plea to her mother to be a normal child comes after she is told the dates of her piano lessons. “ Why don’t you like me the way I am? I’m not A genius! I can’t plat the piano…”(Tan 453).
Jing-mei took the piano lesson every day despite what she wanted to do. She went through the motions at the piano lessons she never put any effort into it because she was being forced to be there. “I did pick up the basics pretty quick, I might have become a good pianist at a young age. But I was determined no to try,
Smith 4
not to become anybody different” (Tan 454) Jing-mei wanted to be her own person. She didn’t want to be what
her mother wanted her to be. Toward the end of this short story Jing-mei’s mother enrolls her in a recital to showcase her talent. Jing-mei was to play the song “Pleading Child”. She played the song horribly at the recital. Jing-mei once again was upset with her mother for making her play in the recital. Jing-mei’s mother still made her take piano lesson after the bad recital. Jing-mei was furious at her mother because she continued to make her play.
Jing-mei’s built up frustration exploded in a comment that ended her mothers forced piano lessons, “…I wish I wasn’t your daughter. I wish you waren’t my mother… I wish I was dead like them” (Tan 457). Jing-mei
Was referring to the children that her mother had lost in China. This comment showed how much she disliked her mother’s decision to make her play piano.
“Two Kinds” is narrated by Jing-mei after she realizes that her mother wanted the best for her. She is looking back on the events as an adult. Jing-mei has realized that her mother wanted her to be the best. She
Smith 5
wasn’t making Jing-mei doing things to punish her. Heather Thomas, a literary critic of the “Two sides to a
heritage coin” website believes Jing-mei’s mother was the villain of the story. She believes she was the villain because she forced Jing-mei to do things She didn’t want to do. She also believes she was the villain because she was only thinking about herself and her status. I believe that Jing-mei’s mother just wanted the best for her. Jing-mei’s mother’s decisions weren’t appreciated until Jing-mei was old enough to understand her mother’s actions.
The guest
How does Camus generate suspense in “The Guest”? Camus utilizes many different ways to generate suspense and the ways are affected by where and when the author wrote the story. Camus was a French author who was born and raised in Algeria and the country was in the middle of war while Camus was writing most of his stories. The war and Camus political beliefs play parts in most of his stories. Camus uses plot, characterization, and others to generate suspense in “The Guest”. Using suspense in the story helps the reader to become more interested in the story. The main character, as well as Camus himself, is a schoolteacher during the outbreak of a war.
The first way Camus uses suspense is with the plot. Daru, the schoolteacher, is watching two men approaching on horseback. He is not sure who is approaching and he is watching to find out. Daru returned to the window from which he had first seen the two men. They were no longer visible. (Camus 208) The story taking place right before war adds to the suspense because Daru has no idea whom would be coming to the schoolhouse during a storm. This type of suspense comes from the plot and works with the setting.
Later in the story, after Daru find out he is ordered to take a prisoner into town and hand him over to the police, Daru is faced with a decision. The prisoner is sleeping in the next room and Daru wants him to just escape, so Daru does not have to take the prisoner in. Daru dreams of the prisoner leaving in the middle of the night, but when he awakes the prisoner is still there. Daru does not know why the prisoner did not leave. This problem in the story generates a type of suspense known as anticipation of the unknown.
Throughout the story the characters show personalities, but the reader is never able to tell what Daru or the prisoner are thinking. The two characters also are faced with important decisions that could affect what happens to both of them. Daru must decide if he will take the prisoner into the town or let the prisoner go. Daru makes a decision but the reader can not tell what his decision is until Daru makes it. He leaves the prisoner in a fork in the middle of the road and explains where the two paths go. The prisoner must decide if Daru is telling the truth or not. The reader again does not know what the character is thinking until the decision is made.
Camus generates suspense various ways in the story and all of them work very well. Camus keeps the reader on edge with his many types of suspense. This keeps the reader interested and makes for a better plot. Camus uses his stories to get his ideas and thoughts out and in “The Guest” Camus shows personal experiences through his characters. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Everyday use
Tillie Olsen's I Stand Here Ironing, and Alice Walker's Everyday Use, both address the issue of a mother's guilt over how her children turn out. Both mothers blamed themselves for their daughter's problems. While I Stand Here Ironing is obviously about the mousy daughter, in Everyday Use this is camouflaged by the fact most of the action and dialog involves the mother and older sister Dee. Neither does the mother in Everyday Use say outright that she feels guilty, but we catch a glimpse of it when Dee is trying very hard to claim the handmade quilts. The mother says she did something she had never done before, "hugged Maggie to me," then took the quilts from Dee and gave them to Maggie. In I Stand Here Ironing the mother tells us she feels guilty for the way her daughter Emily is, for the things she (the mother) did and did not do. The mother's neighbor even tells her she should "smile at Emily more when you look at her." Again towards the end of the story Emily's mother admits "my wisdom came too late." The mothers unknowingly gave Emily and Maggie second best.
Both mothers compare their two daughters to each other. In Everyday Use the mother tells us that "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure." She Fahning -2-speaks of the fire that burned and scarred Maggie. She tells us how Maggie is not bright, how she shuffles when she walks. Comparing her with Dee whose feet vwere always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them." We also learn of Dee's "style" and the way she awes the other girls at school with it.
The mother in I Stand Here Ironing speaks of Susan, "quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not." Emily "thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple." Like Dee, Emily had a physical limitation also. Hers was asthma.
Both Emily and Maggie show resentment towards their sisters. The sisters who God rewarded with good looks and poise. Emily's mother points out the "poisonous feeling" between the sisters, feelings she contributed to by her inability to balance the "hurts and needs" of the two. In Everyday Use we see Maggie "eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world would never say to her." Maggie's mother seems to have reinforced this by being unable to say no to Dee also. This is what makes the point in the story when she finally does say no (regarding the quilts) such an important moment in Maggie's life.
The attitude of the mothers towards the polished daughters borders on contempt. I believe this is more evident in Everyday Use, demonstrated by the dream of the TV show. Also the description of Dee reading to them, "burned us with a lot of knowledge we Fahning -3-didn't necessarily need to know," and again when she shoved "us away...like dimwits." It's also pointed out that Dee and Susan are self-centered and selfish while Maggie and Emily are caring and giving.
I think in the end both of the mothers realize their daughters are okay the way they are. They come to accept their daughters limitations and cherish their quiet gifts. Not everyone can be polished and successful in worldly ways. Maybe that's why Maggie was smiling in the end, her mother finally accepted her as is.
This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Analysis on "Everyday Use"
The initial setting would take place in the mother's house. The plot take place mainly between Dee and Maggie. As in "The Lottery" probably the main focus in this story is to follow the traditions.
The short story "Everyday Use" is a short story told by a mother about the visit of her daughter Dee from the city to her house in the country. She lives with her other daughter Maggie. The story is narrated in first person so that through the mother’s eyes we perceive the disparity between the two sisters and their opposite ways of life.
Maggie is very unsteady, insecure, doubtful, Dee acts without hesitation the contrary as Maggie. Maggie lives and has grown up working in the country while Dee was sent to the school in Augusta because "she wanted nice things".
Dee represents the strenght, the society's tradition, the liberalism, the "freedom", the rebel. While on the other hand, there is Maggie the traditional, the undecision, the insecurity, the kind, and the warmth.
Another important feature is the house representing the family's tradition, the support, the backup, the love.
Racism is obviously present in the lives of black people. The three main characters are
black. Dee is the only one who is not afraid to deal with society and that is maybe because she lives in a city. Therefore, she does not feel inferior to them, she sees them equally as she sees herself in the mirror. As a final comment. Women are forced to work more than usual in the society.
A rose for Emily
"A Fallen Monument"
"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is a brilliant story. Faulkner uses great techniques to try to confuse the reader. The story begins at one point; he throws a twist in the middle and brings the reader back to the ending of the story. This is a fantastic story that gives us an insight of a fallen monument. Faulkner has illustrated some strong irony and symbolism.
The story begins in a small (made-up) town where a woman by the name of Emily Grierson died. Emily is described as a "fallen monument" that many people admired as well as questioned. Emily lived with her father until the last day of his life, and tried to cling a little longer. She had taught some painting classes but with the years her classes stopped. Craziness ran in her family and that is the only thing that could have happened to this poor woman. Through the years her father would run off her guy friends and she began not having a social life. After her father's death she met a man named Homer Barron and began to go out a little. The town people were happy for her because they now seen her a little more and it was better than to be in a old house all the time. Emily began to think that some day she and Homer would marry, and when things went wrong she poisoned him. As time passed people began to wonder, and a smell began developing. Although the smell was hitting everyone in the town, no one said anything, instead they sprinkled lime all over her house. Emily died a time later. After the town people heard the new they went to see her to begin the funeral arrangements. Tobby her faithful servant ran off and the town people discover the smell. After all this time Emily had been sleeping with Homer's dead body until she herself died.
This story had some symbolism. "A Fallen Monument" that is what town people classified Emily. A woman who at some point could have had it all but her craziness held her. Emily was once a young woman that latter became an obligation. She was kept in the past and kept clinging to all she had even if it was dead. First, she did not want to admit her father's death. Then after she poisoned Homer she kept clinging to his body for some time. Her voice had became dry from not talking to people and her body was a sagging bag. She had become crazy, but no one tried to help her, because they thought greatly of her. For example, after her father's death Colonel Sartoris told her she would not have to pay any taxes in that town and even after the new generation came in it stayed that way. The new mayor tried to get her to pay her taxes but after some time gave up. The reader can also see he power when she goes to the store to buy some rat poison. The guy helping her knows that there is a policy he must follow and must ask what the poison is for. He tries to get some answers before giving her the poison, but gets no where and ends up caving in and giving her the poison. Emily was once a strong woman who with time became falling and falling and that is how the name "Fallen Monument" became about.
There is also some irony to the story; Emily being from the south falls in head over heals with a Northern. She even thinks about marry him when back in that time people would not do those kind of things. She goes off and buys the necessities for the wedding and stores them in a room. This lady thought she was getting married, but Homer was "not a marring man". At the end of the story Faulkner talks about a strand of "iron-gray hair," which belonged to Emily. It was found in the bed next to Homer's rotten body. Throughout time all the town people pity her for being alone in that old home, with only her servant. Wondering if she's all right and how she is taking things. While all this time she has been at home sleeping with Homer's rotten body.
In conclusion Faulkner used some good techniques writing this story. "A Rose for Emily" gets one of my best ratings. All together he creats a story with a good conflict about a woman who can not let go. He show symbolism and irony in the story and puts in some good points. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Time and Setting in "A Rose for Emily"
In "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner uses the element of time to enhance details of the setting and vice versa. By avoiding the chronological order of events of Miss Emily's life, Faulkner first gives the reader a finished puzzle, and then allows the reader to examine this puzzle piece by piece, step by step. By doing so, he enhances the plot and presents two different perspectives of time held by the characters. The first perspective (the world of the present) views time as a "mechanical progression" in which
the past is a "diminishing road." The second perspective (the world of tradition and the past) views the past as "a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years." The first perspective is that of Homer and the modern generation. The second is that of the older members of the Board of Aldermen and of the confederate soldiers. Emily holds the second view as well, except that for her there is no bottleneck dividing her from the meadow of the past.
Faulkner begins the story with Miss Emily's funeral, where the men see her as a "fallen monument" and the women are anxious to see the inside of her house. He gives us a picture of a woman who is frail because she has "fallen," yet as important and symbolic as a "monument." The details of Miss Emily's house closely relate to her and symbolize what she stands for. It is set on "what had once been the most select street." The narrator (which is the town in this case) describes the house as "stubborn and coquettish." Cotton gins and garages have long obliterated the neighborhood, but it is the only house left. With a further look at Miss Emily's life, we realize the importance of the setting in which the story takes place. The house in which she lives remains static and unchanged as the town progresses. Inside the walls of her abode, Miss Emily conquers time and progression.
In chapter one, Faulkner takes us back to the time when Miss Emily refused to pay her taxes. She believes that just because Colonel Sartoris remitted her taxes in 1894, that she is exempt from paying them even years later. The town changes, it's people change, yet Miss Emily has put a halt on time. In her mind, the Colonel is still alive even though he is not. When the deputation waits upon her, we get a glimpse of her decaying house. "It smelled of dust and disuse…It was furnished in heavy, leather covered furniture…the leather was cracked….On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father." The description of Miss Emily's house is very haunting. There is no life or motion in this house. Everything appears to be decaying, just as Miss Emily herself. The picture of her father is just another symbol of immobility and no sense of time. When he died, Miss Emily refused to acknowledge his death. She stopped time, at least in her mind.
Miss Emily is "a small, fat woman in black, with a gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt." "Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain." In this case, the watch is a symbol of time; yet in this house, time is invisible. Miss Emily has lost her understanding of time. When these men try to convince her that a lot of time has passed since her father's death and that she must pay her taxes, she repeats, "I have no taxes in Jefferson," and vanquishes them.
From this point, Faulkner makes a smooth transition to a period of thirty years ago, when Miss Emily "vanquished their fathers about the smell." The plot continues in the backward direction, demonstrating Miss Emily's lack of understanding of time. A smell develops in Miss Emily's house, which is another sign of decay and death. Miss Emily is oblivious to the smell, while it continues to bother the neighbors. These town's people are intimidated by Miss Emily, and have to sprinkle lime juice on her lawn in secrecy. They are afraid to confront her, just as the next generation is afraid to confront her about the taxes. Her strong presence is enough for her to surpass the law.
Homer Barron, a symbol of progression and alteration, comes around to pave the town's sidewalks and construction modernizes the town. He starts courting Miss Emily, and the reader thinks that perhaps he can put an end to Miss Emily's hallucination with time. Homer Barron is a cheerful character and an outsider. "Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer would be in the center of the group." However, he is a bachelor who does not want to settle down, and the town's people don't approve of him marrying Miss Emily because of his class. "Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people." Once Homer Barron enters Miss Emily's house and her life, he is bound to her forever without escape. "So we were not surprised when Homer Barron-the streets had been finished some time since-was gone. She murders him and preserves his body like one would preserve a dead rose. Once again, time stands in her house, while the rest of the setting, the town, changes.
Years passed and the "newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town." The new generation makes Miss Emily feel even more isolated. "When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it." Miss Emily refuses to let any change affect her life and her house. "Thus she passed from generation to generation-dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse."
"And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows." Miss Emily dies in this decaying, old, creepy, house which is located in a bright and rising town. The final stage of decay in her house is revealed to the reader. Not only is she dead, but so is Homer Barron, of whom only a decaying corpse remains. "A thin acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal." The details of the setting throughout the story foreshadow this dramatic conclusion. The decay of the house, the dust and the cracks, Miss Emily's refusal for change all lead up to her death and that of Homer Barron. As soon as an outside force, Homer Barron, enters this creepy house, he disappears in time. "He had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust."
The scrambling of time throughout the story is a great demonstration of the scrambling of time in Miss Emily's mind and in her house. As the town changes and progresses, grows and modernizes, Miss Emily's "stubborn and coquettish" house remains the same. Perhaps if the story of Miss Emily had been set in a different place, her life would have turned out differently. With all the pressures from her father and the town's people, she became a very closed up and rather frightening person. There were too many expectations of women in those days and Faulkner demonstrates the consequences of such a life through Miss Emily. By setting the story in an upscale, post Civil War town, he uses both the details of the setting and time to show what happens women such as Miss Emily, the "tragic monument."
Miss Emily's world was always in the past. When she is threatened with desertion and disgrace, she not only takes refuge in that world but also takes Homer with her in the only manner possible--death. As a final conclusion of Miss Emily's life and the story, her position in regard to the specific problem of time is suggested in the scene where the old soldiers appear at her funeral. "The very old me-some in their brushed Confederate uniforms-on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as is she had been a contemporary of their, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression." These men have lost their sense of time as well as Miss Emily. The hallucinate; they imagine things which never occurred; there is no sense of time in their minds. Faulkner presents a very horrifying picture in this story, and he does this by playing with the chronology, using symbols and foreshadowing and presenting a detailed setting. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Young Goodman brown
"Young Goodman Brown", by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story that is thick with allegory. "Young Goodman Brown" is a moral story which is told through the perversion of a religious leader. In "Young Goodman Brown", Goodman Brown is a Puritan minister who lets his excessive pride in himself interfere with his relations with the community after he meets with the devil, and causes him to live the life of an exile in his own community.
"Young Goodman Brown" begins when Faith, Brown's wife, asks him not to go on an "errand". Goodman Brown says to his "love and (my) Faith" that "this one night I must tarry away from thee." When he says his "love" and his "Faith", he is talking to his wife, but he is also talking to his "faith" to God. He is venturing into the woods to meet with the Devil, and by doing so, he leaves his unquestionable faith in God with his wife. He resolves that he will "cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven." This is an example of the excessive pride because he feels that he can sin and meet with the Devil because of this promise that he made to himself. There is a tremendous irony to this promise because when Goodman Brown comes back at dawn; he can no longer look at his wife with the same faith he had before.
When Goodman Brown finally meets with the Devil, he declares that the reason he was late was because "Faith kept me back awhile." This statement has a double meaning because his wife physically prevented him from being on time for his meeting with the devil, but his faith to God psychologically delayed his meeting with the devil.
The Devil had with him a staff that "bore the likeness of a great black snake". The staff which looked like a snake is a reference to the snake in the story of Adam and Eve. The snake led Adam and Eve to their destruction by leading them to the Tree of Knowledge. The Adam and Eve story is similar to Goodman Brown in that they are both seeking unfathomable amounts of knowledge. Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they were expelled from their paradise. The Devil's staff eventually leads Goodman Brown to the Devil's ceremony which destroys Goodman Brown's faith in his fellow man, therefore expelling him from his utopia.
Goodman Brown almost immediately declares that he kept his meeting with the Devil and no longer wishes to continue on his errand with the Devil. He says that he comes from a "race of honest men and good Christians" and that his father had never gone on this errand and nor will he. The Devil is quick to point out however that he was with his father and grandfather when they were flogging a woman or burning an Indian village, respectively. These acts are ironic in that they were bad deeds done in the name of good, and it shows that he does not come from "good Christians."
When Goodman Brown's first excuse not to carry on with the errand proves to be unconvincing, he says he can't go because of his wife, "Faith". And because of her, he can not carry out the errand any further. At this point the Devil agrees with him and tells him to turn back to prevent that "Faith should come to any harm" like the old woman in front of them on the path. Ironically, Goodman Brown's faith is harmed because the woman on the path is the woman who "taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser." The Devil and the woman talk and afterward, Brown continues to walk on with the Devil in the disbelief of what he had just witnessed. Ironically, he blames the woman for consorting with the Devil but his own pride stops him from realizing that his faults are the same as the woman's.
Brown again decides that he will no longer to continue on his errand and rationalizes that just because his teacher was not going to heaven, why should he "quit my dear Faith, and go after her". At this, the Devil tosses Goodman Brown his staff (which will lead him out of his Eden) and leaves him.
Goodman Brown begins to think to himself about his situation and his pride in himself begins to build. He "applauds himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet his minister...And what calm sleep would be his...in the arms of Faith!" This is ironic because at the end of the story, he can not even look Faith in the eye, let alone sleep in her arms. As Goodman Brown is feeling good about his strength in resisting the Devil, he hears the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin. He overhears their conversation and hears them discuss a "goodly young woman to be taken in to communion" that evening at that night's meeting and fears that it may be his Faith.
When Goodman Brown hears this he becomes weak and falls to the ground. He "begins to doubt whether there really was a Heaven above him" and this is a key point when Goodman Brown's faith begins to wain. Goodman Brown in panic declares that "With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" Again, Brown makes a promise to keep his faith unto God. Then "a black mass of cloud" goes in between Brown and the sky as if to block his prayer from heaven. Brown then hears what he believed to be voices that he has before in the community. Once Goodman Brown begins to doubt whether this is really what he had heard or not, the sound comes to him again and this time it is followed by "one voice, of a young woman". Goodman believes this is Faith and he yells out her name only to be mimicked by the echoes of the forest, as if his calls to Faith were falling on deaf ears. A pink ribbon flies through the air and Goodman grabs it. At this moment, he has lost all faith in the world and declares that there is "no good on earth." Young Goodman Brown in this scene is easily manipulated simply by the power of suggestion. The suggestion that the woman in question is his Faith, and because of this, he easily loses his faith.
Goodman Brown then loses all of his inhibitions and begins to laugh insanely. He takes hold of the staff which causes him to seem to "fly along the forest-path". This image alludes to that of Adam and Eve being led out of the Garden of Eden as is Goodman Brown being led out of his utopia by the Devil's snakelike staff. Hawthorne at this point remarks about "the instinct that guides mortal man to evil". This is a direct statement from the author that he believes that man's natural inclination is to lean to evil than good. Goodman Brown had at this point lost his faith in God, therefore there was nothing restraining his instincts from moving towards evil because he had been lead out from his utopian image of society.
At this point, Goodman Brown goes mad and challenges evil. He feels that he will be the downfall of evil and that he is strong enough to overcome it all. This is another demonstration of Brown's excessive pride and arrogance. He believes that he is better than everyone else in that he alone can destroy evil.
Brown then comes upon the ceremony which is setup like a perverted Puritan temple. The altar was a rock in the middle of the congregation and there were four trees surrounding the congregation with their tops ablaze, like candles. A red light rose and fell over the congregation which cast a veil of evil over the congregation over the devil worshippers.
Brown starts to take notice of the faces that he sees in the service and he recognizes them all, but he then realizes that he does not see Faith and "hope came into his heart". This is the first time that the word "hope" ever comes into the story and it is because this is the true turning point for Goodman Brown. If Faith was not there, as he had hoped, he would not have to live alone in his community of heathens, which he does not realize that he is already apart of. Another way that the hope could be looked at is that it is all one of "the Christian triptych". (Capps 25) The third part of the triptych which is never mentioned throughout the story is charity. If Brown had had "charity" it would have been the "antidote that would have allowed him to survive without despair the informed state in which he returned to Salem." (Camps 25)
The ceremony then begins with a a cry to "Bring forth the converts!" Surprisingly Goodman Brown steps forward. "He had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought...". Goodman Brown at this point seems to be in a trance and he loses control of his body as he is unconsciously entering this service of converts to the devil. The leader of the service than addresses the crowd of converts in a disturbing manner. He informs them that all the members of the congregation are the righteous, honest, and incorruptible of the community. The sermon leader then informs the crowd of their leader's evil deeds such as attempted murder of the spouse and wife, adultery, and obvious blasphemy. After his sermon, the leader informs them to look upon each other and Goodman Brown finds himself face to face with Faith. The leader begins up again declaring that "Evil is the nature of mankind" and he welcomes the converts to "communion of your race". (The "communion of your race" statement reflects to the irony of Brown's earlier statement that he comes from "a race of honest men and good Christians.") The leader than dips his hand in the rock to draw a liquid from it and "to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads". Brown than snaps out from his trance and yells "Faith! Faith! Look up to Heaven and resist the wicked one!" At this, the ceremony ends and Brown finds himself alone. He does not know whether Faith, his wife, had kept her faith, but he finds himself alone which leads him to believe that he is also alone in his faith.
Throughout the story, Brown lacks emotion as a normal person would have had. The closest Brown comes to showing an emotion is when "a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew." The dew on his cheek represents a tear that Brown is unable to produce because of his lack of emotion. Hawthorne shows that Brown has "no compassion for the weaknesses he sees in others, no remorse for his own sin, and no sorrow for his loss of faith." (Easterly 339) His lack of remorse and compassion "condemns him to an anguished life that is spiritually and emotionally dissociated." (Easterly 341) This scene is an example of how Goodman Brown chose to follow his head rather than his heart. Had Brown followed his heart, he may have still lived a good life. If he followed with his heart, he would have been able to sympathize with the community's weaknesses, but instead, he listened to his head and excommunicated himself from the community because he only thought of them as heathens.
"Young Goodman Brown" ends with Brown returning to Salem at early dawn and looking around like a "bewildered man." He cannot believe that he is in the same place that he just the night before; because to him, Salem was no longer home. He felt like an outsider in a world of Devil worshippers and because his "basic means of order, his religious system, is absent, the society he was familiar with becomes nightmarish." (Shear 545) He comes back to the town "projecting his guilt onto those around him." (Tritt 114) Brown expresses his discomfort with his new surroundings and his excessive pride when he takes a child away from a blessing given by Goody Cloyse, his former Catechism teacher, as if he were taking the child "from the grasp of the fiend himself." His anger towards the community is exemplified when he sees Faith who is overwhelmed with excitement to see him and he looks "sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting." Brown cannot even stand to look at his wife with whom he was at the convert service with. He feels that even though he was at the Devil's service, he is still better than everyone else because of his excessive pride. Brown feels he can push his own faults on to others and look down at them rather than look at himself and resolve his own faults with himself.
Goodman Brown was devastated by the discovery that the potential for evil resides in everybody. The rest of his life is destroyed because of his inability to face this truth and live with it. The story, which may have been a dream, and not a real life event, planted the seed of doubt in Brown's mind which consequently cut him off from his fellow man and leaves him alone and depressed. His life ends alone and miserable because he was never able to look at himself and realize that what he believed were everyone else's faults were his as well. His excessive pride in himself led to his isolation from the community. Brown was buried with "no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom." This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Young Goodman Brown
"'Lo! There ye stand, my children,' said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its
despairing awfulness, as if his once angelis nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
"Depending on one another's hearts, ye had still hoped, that virtue were not all a dream. Now ye
are undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again,
my children, to the communion of your race!'"
The above quotation from Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is of central importance in analyzing the attitudes and
ideas present throughout the story, though in a curious way. The quotation (and the story itself), on first reading,
seem superficially to portray a central character's loss of faith and the spiritual tragedy contained therein. Rereading,
however, reveals a more complex set of ideas, ones which neither fully condemn nor condone the strictly constructed
dichotomy of good and evil that Hawthorne employs again and again over the course of goodman Brown's journey.
I think Hawthorne had much more in mind than a mere outline of good and evil. His primary struggle in Young
Goodman Brown seems to be less with faith vs. the faithless void than with the points in between these states. The
story seems more about the journey through between two rigidly defined states than about good and evil. By
describing good and evil through heavy-handed metaphors and symbols, such as his wife's name and the satanic
communion he finds himself at in the forest, and then describing goodman Brown's inability to adapt his self-image to
the hypocrisy he finds, Hawthorne comments on the ultimate failure of such a rigidly proscribed formula for human
existence. At the same time that sin is described as a seething, pervasive hypocrisy, it is also seen as a mundane fact
of living; Hawthorne seems to forfeit ultimate clarity of message in order to concentrate more fully on the journey
itself.
Hawthorne's sense of irony and sarcasm is well illustrated in an episode like goodman Brown's loss of his wife, Faith.
Brown experiences several points in the forest where he wants to stop, yet he always continues, because he still has
Faith. When a pink ribbon flutters down to him, however, he goes half-mad and continues on to the communion, now
believing himself Faithless. Hawthorne's use of more easily interpreted incidents and symbols like these only
reinforce the idea for me that this is a story about much more than easy, clear divisions of human belief and behavior.
I think Hawthorne knowingly used symbols which are slightly amusing in their simplicity because he is commenting,
again, on the journey itself. His irony says that this is anything but an easy journey that starts out at dusk, made by a
man with a wife named Faith, who meets witches in the woods and witnesses the totally corrupt nature of all humanity
and then dies a lonely, tormented death. It's the perfect Christian fairy tale nightmare, and Hawthorne seems to have
used it for exactly this reason: the journey itself is never so easy. When Brown returns to his town and sees the
entire community involved in perfectly hypocritical activities as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening, I get
the sense that Hawthorne is yet again suggesting that none of those simple allegories, whether in favor of good or
evil, are sufficient to embody something as complex as faith. Hawthorne's humor is subtle, but I think he uses it to
talk successfully around the perimeter of the issue he wants to address instead of opting for total clarity.
Hawthorne uses many other dichotomous pairings to illustrate his ideas. Dark vs. light, uncertainty vs. safety, nature
vs. human, and fantasy vs. reality are employed to reinforce the idea that good and evil have been set up as strict
categories into which no one, not even the religious figures of the community, fit neatly. Is Hawthorne preaching a
more pliable attitude toward human thinking? Is he describing the hypocrisy which undoubtedly exists in the world
and then letting goodman Brown be a truly pious individual through his inability to accept what he sees in the forest?
Or is he more concerned with the journey itself than with any specific message or description of possible outcomes?
Goodman Brown's abrupt, gloomy death seems to reinforce the latter idea. Had Hawthorne been concerned with
making a very particular statement about what he considers right and wrong in terms of human behavior, I think he
would have spent more time building up his tragic end.
Young Goodman Brown's painstaking physical journey into the forest exists in contrast to the simple dualism of good
and evil. It is interesting that the journey is described in such detail. For example, clouds, trees, the shifting quality
of the light, and the appearance of the fellow traveler as the journey continues seem to underscore the inevitability
and importance of the journey to points in between two states of being. Goodman Brown eventually finds himself
betrayed by the easy categorization of good vs. evil, because he is unable to accept the possibility that goodness and
sin are inextricably bound up in human nature. His version of himself can't accommodate a world in which his "race of
honest men and good Christians" could have taken the same path as he and returned "merrily after midnight" (p
578).
Ultimately, I think Hawthorne is more concerned with the tension that exists on the journey than he is with preaching
for a revised, more adaptable human. His tone is ironic: hypocrisy exists; some accept it and some don't. Goodman
Brown is the example of one who doesn't, and he dies a gloomy death. Hawthorne's attitude toward goodman Brown
seems to fall somewhere between ambivalent and sympathetic, though he retains a certain distance throughout the
story. Brown becomes neither the pious, tragic hero nor the dupe who couldn't take the good (though outrageously
hypocritical) life when he saw it. Brown's character seems to function primarily as a symbol of the ultimate hazards of
the journey between good and evil. That Brown loses his way doesn't mean that the path is totally obscured, just as
the rest of the community's hypocrisy does not mean that they chose the correct path. Hawthorne retains a certain
distance in his treatment of goodman Brown.
The tone of the above quotation illustrates Hawthorne's continued use of dichotomy. Hawthorne's tone is just as
ironic here: this passage is so overwrought and gloom-filled that it completes one half of yet another strict dualism.
The sad, solemn figure's proclamation that "evil must be your only happiness" is similar in its simplification to the
fairy-tale characterization of faith as a pretty young woman with pink ribbons in her hair. The speaking figure's "once
angelic nature" vs. his "despairing awfulness" further underscores the dualistic nature of the story.
The Norton Anthology describes the difficulties that the dominant writers of the period had with Christianity and
Calvinism (p 394). Hawthorne's attitudes are no doubt partially a reaction to the Puritan mores of the era. There was
no room in between the extremes of good and evil for individuals to function; goodman Brown's metamorphosis into
"a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man" (p 584) seems to be one possible outcome
of a strict Puritan canon which does not allow for a middle ground. Hawthorne may also be commenting on the
hypocrisy (also described in the Anthology, p 396) seen when essential "American" ideas of freedom are contrasted
with the pillage and destruction of the native American. This is yet another difficult and unyielding paradox, with
which Hawthorne seems ultimately concerned.
Hawthorne seems to say that good and evil as absolute states are neither preferable nor realistic. His use of this
character, who is unable to function within an immutable version of ultimately mutable concepts, is more about the
things that exist in between these two states than it is about a definitive statement on outlining a definition of
