Jillian Johnson Professor Carl Miller English 1020 25 June 2011 Goodman Brown’s Loss of Innocence Since the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, the temptation of sin is what inevitably dictates people’s lives. In the allegorical story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, he portrays man’s struggle with temptation through the use of the protagonist, Goodman Brown. Goodman Brown, looses his innocence while he travels deeper into the dark forest, and has an experience that forever left an impression on his life. Hawthorne relies on symbolism to overall portray the allegorical journey of the fall of man to sin. The story begins when Goodman Brown has to leave his beautiful wife, Faith, whose name is no accident, to go on a journey in the dark woods.
Like a newlywed couple Brown’s trust in his spouse (Faith) is not as strong. I believe this is the reason he sets out into the forest to test his faith in God. “He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. “ Brown is describing his path to evil as dreary and dark. He knows he is heading down a road, which will leave him scarred for life.
Using the symbols of the gypsy, the wisdom of the king, and the vastness of an unknown and unforgiving land, Coelho demonstrates how fear is a strong power that must be confronted in order to move forward in life. Before his journey to Africa, Santiago experienced only a paranoid fear of the unknown. After being plagued with a recurring dream, the boy sought help in the form of a dream interpreter in the nearby town. He soon had to come to terms with what his mind told him and what his heart made him do. The only dream interpreter in the town was an old gypsy.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is set in the dark period of Puritan history: the witch-trials. One follows Brown’s reluctant journey into the forest. To the Puritans, the forest has always been a place of evil, and “demonic presence, the ancestral spirits” rest there (Cook). Brown supposedly has a meeting with some witches, but he does not want to be seen with such sort, in fear of being accused of witchcraft. The setting in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” subtly brings out additional meanings through symbolism, ultimately reveals Brown’s personality and values, and drastically shows a change in Brown throughout the journey.
Finally, they overcome fear and deals with the hopelessness. Now, we will discuss the ways in which those two characters overcome and dealing with their fear and hopelessness. In the beginning of the poem, the character, Dante, lost his way in the forest. In looking for a way out when he encounter three animals blocking his path, a lion that symbolize violence, leopard that represent greed, and a wolf as a symbol of lust. He met a teacher, Virgil, and he begs for Virgil’s help.
Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors, without having done anything to deserve rejection; Heathcliff is made to feel like an outsider after Mr. Earnshaw’s death and suffers cruel mistreatment by Hindley. In these formative years, he is deprived of love, sociability and education, according to Nelly, Hindley's treatment towards Heathcliff was "enough to make a fiend of a saint". He is separated from the family, reduced to the status of a servant, forced to do farm work. Personality that Heathcliff develops in his adult life has been formed in response to the deprivation of his childhood. He is quite vengeful in nature, and he is also stubborn and steadfast he does whatever he sets his mind to.
Collins is giving us a firsthand look at how our morals can affect us, but not always in a good way. In Collins poem he shows us how flawed the teacher’s approach to educating his students is. He shows us how the lies the teacher is telling the children are doing them more harm than good. His lies are actually making his students more ignorant about the real world than they were to begin with. Children that are ignorant to the world and the violence that is in it will never be able to be functioning members of society.
Nathaniel Hawthorne often uses symbolism and allegory in his stories. Young Goodman Brown is one story of his that stands out to me with his use of symbolism and allegory. Hawthorne uses symbolism in this story to show us a young man who struggles with the ideas of “good” and “evil”. There are very many examples of symbolism in the story ranging from the names of the characters to Goodman’s journey through the forest. One of the first allegorical devices that Hawthorne uses in Young Goodman Brown is the names of the characters, specifically, Young Goodman Brown and Faith, his wife.
“The falsity of Mr. Gradgrind’s utilitarian philosophy of life is demonstrated by the failure of his education system as applied to his own children and to others.” Discuss this comment in relation to the novel. The education system in Coketown is that of utilitarianism, where the children are drained of their emotions, imagination and all things that make them unique as they are crammed with facts. The falsity of this system is seen as the novel follows the lives of those raised in these conditions. Louisa finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage, Tom ruins lives through his self-centered behavior and Bitzer is the model of a heartless student. Dickens shows the disasters of the failed Gradgrind philosophy with the use of foreshadowing, reoccurring themes, pathetic fallacy, symbolism along with the actions and outcomes of the characters being affected.
‘weep!” (3), shows the agony of the child who’s not even old enough to pronounce the term“sweep”. The child states, “so your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep” (4). The use of the “s” sounds hint towards the childs sadness at what life has brought him.Nevertheless, the child tries to make the best out of his situation & help others like “little Tom Dacre” and accept their situation, Tom cried at the loss of his innocence, but the child convinces him that it’s better that way because then, the “soot cannot spoil your white hair” (8). This means that the impurity & disgrace of his position can no longer touch him or hurt him. This nature is unusual for a child, but was produced because society pushed the child to mature into becoming an adult before he was even a child.In the poem an Angel tells Tom that if he is righteous and acts with the goodness of his heart then God will be his father and he would never wish for joy because he will forever have it.