Freedom as a Curse for People - Essay Example

Irving’s tale of a man who falls asleep for decades is the tale of a man who did not want to be hampered by the conventions of society.  Winkle was not a hard-working man who put much effort into his family life: “Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled disposition, who take the world easily, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound” (726).  The model for success generally tends to be a person who works hard and can provide for their family.  A person who is happy to get by on as little as possible is shirking societal standards for what is considered acceptable.  However, this desire to not deal with anything that society expects of him can be seen as the cause of his long sleep.  Once he does wake from his decades-long nap, he finds himself completely alone in a new society that he doesn’t understand how to function in any better than the old one, but at least he knew the people before: “This loneliness seems to originate in Rip’s inability to communicate fully with his fellows” (Mengeling 644).  Winkle’s laziness and rejection of society lead directly to his unfortunate circumstances at the end of the story.

            The ability to reason is one of the human race’s defining characteristics.  Some people find the confines of reason and the burden of being able to able to justify arguments and beliefs to be stifling.  Those people are generally considered to be on the fringes of society, and they are often institutionalized for being a danger to society.  The narrator of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one obvious case in the literature of a person who is struggling with the concepts of madness and reason: “You fancy me mad.  Madmen know nothing.  But you should have seen me.  You should have seen how wisely I proceeded…I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” (199).  This person is suffering from mental illness, as we phrase it in modern society.  He is free from the confines of rationality, but as we can see, this simply causes more trouble for him than what he ever considered: “The murderer congratulates himself that not even his victim could have detected anything wrong with the floor which has been replaced over the body” (Robinson 370).  As he confesses to the crime at the end of the story, it is obvious that this character was not better off with his absolute freedom from rational thinking.

            Morality is the most important aspect of society which allows for its continuation.  If people had no morals then they would treat each other in such a way that would be only to people’s advantage, and society could not exist under such circumstances.  In “Young Goodman Brown” the title character becomes disillusioned with morality when he learns of the extent of the sins of other people.  Though he is going into the woods for some dark purpose, he then becomes determined to resist the devil when he sees so many people who are involved with him.  This event changed him into a very different person from what he was like at the beginning of the story: “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative man did he become, from the night of the fearful dream” (676).  He attempted to free himself from the confines of morality at the beginning of the story when he planned on meeting the stranger from the woods, but he determined eventually not to do so.  At his funeral, practically nobody came because of the type of person that he became: “At the end of the story he is full of cynicism and moral skepticism; they are not his sin but merely its effects” (McKeithan 94).  Goodman Brown learns that there are very good reasons for morality to be in place, and he suffers a miserable existence until his death because at one point he had intentions of ignoring those very solid reasons.

            While freedom is always considered to be such a positive concept, we can see how too much of it can be harmful.  This is a rather banal concept, that too much of a good thing corrupts it, yet it has very solid foundations in its veracity.  These characters did not always ask for the amount of freedom they received, yet it found its way to them anyway.  They should be taken as cautionary tales for those who would wish to escape from the various aspects of society that have a good reason for existing.