Young Goodman Brown - Comapare it to a story in your own personal life or a friends and have a moral at the end - Essay Example

Yash Merchant - LCS 121 - Dr. Stanislaus J. Kozikowski Hawthorne’s tale depicts on the troubling dream of a young man in Salem. In this dream, Goodman Brown comes face to face with evil and forced to scrutinize the nature of evil within man. He appears to be dismayed by the evil he encounters, not realizing his own participation. Through an analysis of the content, the reader may notice that the tale’s implication lies in discovering the sense of Goodman Brown’s encounter in the woods. The story started with Goodman Brown leaving his wife, Faith for an overnight chore.

She begs him not to go, but he does so anyway. Faith merely symbolizes hope in the story. She represents love, as in the love between man and woman, and also the love, faith and devotion he has in God. In essence, by leaving Faith in the beginning of the story, he leaves his faith in God and good. Faith as introduced in the beginning of the story as the devoted wife who warns her husband to stay with her because of a dream that she has. Without Faith, Goodman Brown might have no faith at all; he depends on her.

Goodman Brown counts on Faith to convert him after his chore with the devil. When Goodman Brown ultimately meets with the Devil, he states that the reason he delays himself because Faith kept him back for awhile. Where he then realized that the incident with his wife prohibited him from being on time for his gathering with the devil, but his faith towards God furthers the reason for delaying his meeting.I remembered one of my friends told me that faith highlights numerous conflicts. Lives have gone astray and wars fought over the central that one’s belief exceeds the other.

Tim, my friend would ask his friends or companions questions like this all the time. He would ask if we believed in heaven, hell, God, or anything. Tim went to church every Sunday as a boy, so he assumed the answer was yes. Sometime we would sit down and really gave it some contemplation. But deep down inside us we knew the faith was not there. Tim grew up going to this small church in the suburbs where he previously lived. Their church, according to him, had a totality of maybe about two hundred people.

Most people who came to church, he says, all over fifty years old. His dad was well-known in the choir, so creeping out of the church wasn’t all that hard. Tim together with his friends would always go behind the church and play. Because they thought that listening to the oldies make them bored.Tim then has come to determine that most people inside the church aren’t really sure of what they believe. They just come to church, listen to talks and chats as well as the music. Tim thought that people are just there maybe to ask help from God, or give them something that they wanted – money, a good job, a comfortable place, etc.

Then Tim was never the same from that point on. One day, Tim went to another town volunteering at a home for battered women and children. Then he came across this woman who gave him insights. They talked for quite some time about her faith. The woman happened to be a battered woman; she had been abused and battered by her husband for so many times, there was even this one time when she was pregnant, she was beaten so hard that she lost her baby. But one day a concerned neighbor reported the event to the police because the neighbor got so worried with the lady.

At once, the police came and arrested the husband, and the lady was taken into the hospital and got treated. When she has recovered, she was brought to the institution. She was saved from the “devil”. She told Tim how lucky she was when God heard her prayers, and how an angel (the neighbor) came to inform the police about her situation. All of a sudden everything clicked inside Tim’s head. Tim tends to be a reasonably analytical person, so it was hard for him to entirely believe in something without substantial evidence.

When talking to most people he knew, he tries to get them to think about what they truly believe in, even if it contradicts his personal outlook. After this encounter with the experience of the lady he started going to church again. But this time, he is sure of himself that he wanted to really listen and sink deep inside his heart what God wants to say. Then again, Tim figured everyone’s thought of what happens after this life will just be a speculation. He began to look at everything in a different perspective.

Tim considers this as one of the most significant decisions anyone can make. It was during this moment that he actually started questioning himself about his own beliefs. Young Goodman Brown is a story that spotlights on a man that has to choose between right and wrong, and good and evil. Towards the end, Goodman’s journey from the village through the forest and back again is turned into a self- assessment about his own faith, trust, innocence, and experience. Brown’s vision might have been all in his head about the people around him, or it may even be the truth.

Brown can be considered as a man making wrong decisions towards the evil side, but when the evil reveals what’s really going on his true self is shown and rejects the evil and reaches for the good. If it is a dream his faith is actually gone because how can he love and believe if he can’t even trust. Young Goodman Brown’s story takes a trail of a bewildering dream in which Brown crosses almost the entire path of human lifespan. The main core of the story deals with the tussle or tug-of-war between virtue and vices.

The human weakness of seeing other’s sins, conveniently hiding one own inclination towards sins is vividly presented in Brown’s astonishment blended with bewilderment. The power of fiend worshippers is well portrayed in the initial alluring of the strange traveler who boasts himself of knowing ‘State Secrets’. The consciousness of evil spirit of the others’ secret guilt in deed and thoughts is the driving engine of all vices. The knack used by these forces is categorically revealed as a mockery of baptism and Holy Communion.

Using virtue-like courses to allure human beings that are still pious is one of the best knacks which is illustrated in the story as the ‘instinct that guides mortal man to evil’. Brown’s intermittent beholding of pink ribbon - an indication of Faith, his wife - is simply a sign that the grip of virtue could not altogether be loosened by evil forces. However, the impact of experiencing sins and vices have a dragging force causing human to get changed altogether even after the come back to normal pious course of life.

Tim’s plight is apparently similar to that of Brown in the story. While Brown himself experienced the impact of tussle between virtue and vices in his bewildering dream, Tom has got himself involved much more than his experiences into the sufferings of the woman he met. The aftermath of Brown’s dream could not be anticipated as mandatory in Tim’s life course too. This is because being an analytical person the core trait of Tim would normally be highly observing without landing on any immediate conclusions.

As such the gloom mentioned in Brown’s end could not be imagined in case of Tim. The observations that he (Tim) could come across hence forth in his life might drag him in different directions forming a different trait in him. Brown’s personal experiences are with actual virtue in the shape of his wife, Faith and vices of fiends, whereas Tim’s experiences are just an observer’s impact on observations. The role of self in any involvement is the criterion of attitude and character formation.

As a well wisher or friend, Tim has simply made all possible sort of observation alone. How the woman in Tim’s case acknowledged Tim is also a point to be considered. As per her narration she considered her husband as an embodiment of devil and the neighbor as angel, since the neighbor actually was concerned and worried about the plight of woman. In this episode what is the actual weight or role of Tim? Has Tim been made to realize that he was just a temporary companion to share the suffering with?

Has he offered any help or suggestive guidance to her? As such Brown’s involvement and experiences are not identical with those of Tim whose change after his encounter with the battered women is out of his psychic involvement alone.* * * * * * *