The man who meets Brown in the forest appears to represent the devil; his staff is a symbol of the devil as a serpent. Thus we regress back to the serpent that met Adam and Eve. It was, of course, a tree—the Tree of Knowledge—that tempted Adam. Goodman Brown is tempted by the whole forest. Like Adam, he suffers a great fall from innocence and turns his back on faith literally and symbolically.
Hamlet ICTW In conveying the contempt the Ghost and Hamlet embrace towards the Queen and Claudius, Shakespeare, in his tragedy Hamlet, integrates Claudius’s need for power in order to irradiate the notion of Claudius’s selfishness and human betrayal. In the passage, the damning diction employed by the Ghost reveals biblical undertones and apprises the reader of the conniving ways of Claudius and the Queen. The ghost describes Claudius through the metaphor of a serpent- evoking a biblical reference Adam and Eve. The Ghost reveals that Claudius murdered him by saying: “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.” By employing the wording “serpent,” it highlights Claudius’ sneaky ways: slithering about to take over the throne. Claudius purposefully set out to murder his own flesh and blood, which proves his selfishness, similar to the biblical reference of the serpent.
At the time, fear of witchcraft and the devil were at their peak; this is evident as it is the devil himself who leads innocent Goodman Brown to his downfall and loss of faith. In the end, Brown is left cynical and frightful of everyone around him, similar to the attitudes of those
Among them are his old Sunday school teacher, Goody Cloyse whom the Devil reveals is a witch. In Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” The Misfit in an escaped serial killer who is lurking around in Florida. The Misfit questions all of the meanings of life and the role that he plays in it. He has a steady view of life and acts on what he thinks is right. His “ankles were red and thin”(580), O’Conner has fun with this allusion in that she portrays him as having devilish ankles.
(Hawthorne 2). With Goodman Brown being a noble Christian, he tries to explain that the woods are evil and coming from a line of good, Christian men, he will not go into the woods. Throughout the story, the devil carries around this serpent-looking staff which also shows a sign of evil. A serpent is the symbol, or sign, of the devil whose evil. “But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist it and wiggle itself like a living serpent.” (Hawthorne 2).
The boys prove man to be inherently evil through control, mistreatment, and murder. In The Lord of the Flies the boys on the island prove that humans are innately evil through excessive control. At the very beginning of the book Jack tries to control his choir, making them hunters. Jack said to Ralph, “I’ll split up the choir-my hunters that it,“ (Golding 42). Right here Jack already tries to imply that his choir is more savage than the rest of the boys by calling them hunters.
Dracula stands for Satan, and that stands for whatever is evil and bad. He hates goodness and tries to perpetuate evil while at the same time keeping an almost charming since about himself. However despite the vampires charm and strangely enticing appearances their wickedness could not be hidden from the band of men. Even beautiful Lucy, when she becomes a vampire, is hated by this band of men, despite the fact they were in love with her before. This is clearly a battle between the two most significant supernatural beings in the Christian Faith.
He steers his course by the tiller of an immediate past and by the stars of an immediate future. It's this synchronizing of nature and fortune that soothsayers study, and that the witches in Macbeth know something about. We call it fate, which over-simplifies it. He pits himself no merely against the threat of hell but also against the enmity of "Fate" (as represented in the prophecies of the Weird Sisters): come, Fate, into the list, And champion me to th' utterance. He brags to his wife: But let the frame of tings disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear [.
The short story portrays the theme of good overcoming evil is when Webster grips Mr. Scratch's arm, overcoming his power and forcing Mr. Scratch to sign an agreement to leave stone and all other New Hamshire man alone. Another way this theme is shown in the short story is that the trial against Mr. Scratch is won by Webster even though the judge and jury are all his employees. In addition, the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia also examplifies this theme of good overcoming overcoming evil. For example in the song Johnny is apporached by the devil and is given a bet from the devil that the devil would fiddle better than him. Johnny won the bet because good overcame the evil, and Johnny was given a golden fiddle.
A radical religion called Puritanism was vitally important to the people of Salem, and they were extraordinarily paranoid of the Devil. Two characters in the book The Crucible demonstrate how Puritanism affected the society. Judge Danforth is an example of religious ignorance and ends up being the person who condemns everyone, suspecting they are all witches. On the other hand, John Proctor is a level headed farmer who watches as his friends and their wives are accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death, that is, until his own wife is accused. Using these foil characters, Arthur Miller exemplifies the difference between people who are weak minded and cowardly versus people who are strong-minded and brave.