Compare And Contrast Young Goodman Brown And Good Country People

Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.
To begin with, the country and city surroundings in “Good Country People” and “Everyday Use” shaped psychological and moral traits of the characters in each piece of writing. Both Joy/Hulga from “Good Country People” and Dee/Wangero from “Everyday Use” value intellect because they both studied in a city. Since both girls grew up in a country setting, they treat those who don't value intellect or those who are not intelligent by their standards as lesser and are quite nasty to them.

Mrs. Hopewell, in the former of the two stories, called anyone she considered simple or moral ‘good country people’ or salt of the earth, meaning basic, fundamental goodness. She considered anyone under these definitions, which was anyone who grew up in the country like herself, to be hard to find and “that if, in this day and age, you get good country people, you had better hang onto them” (O’Connor, 11). Anyone who did not fit into these definitions, however, Mrs. Hopewell called trash and considered them below her. Young Goodman Brown in the latter of the two works of literary merit, was a lot like Mrs. Hopewell in the sense that he considered the ‘outsiders’, or Indians in his case, to be devilish and below his Puritan lifestyle. Living in the small community they lived in, as well, established a system of faith in Mrs. Hopewell and Young Goodman Brown. Mrs. Hopewell, living where she did, inherently adopted a Christian faith, and Young Goodman Brown established a Puritan faith from his Puritan settlement. Not only were Mrs. Hopewell and Young Goodman Brown in their respective stories alike, Mrs. Freeman, from “Good Country People”, and Young Goodman Brown knew at the end of their stories something wasn’t as it appeared. Mrs. Freeman knew “some can’t be that simple”

Young Goodman Brown and The Mother in the latter piece of writing consider some of the other characters in their respective stories to have an alien-like appearance or personality because it differs from what they are used to. Young Goodman Brown views the Indians as strange and foreign because of the Indian’s habit of living in the untamed forest, which was designated evil by the Young Goodman Brown’s Puritan community. The Mother views her daughter and maybe-husband Asalamalakim as alien-like because of their hard to pronounce names based off of their ancestral roots and because of their new, weird habits such as “when Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he [didn’t] know how people [shook] hands” according to The Mother (Walker 23). The habits of the Indians, Dee/Wangero, and Asalamalakim are strange and foreign to Young Goodman Brown and The Mother correspondingly, therefore making the former characters seem alien-like. Furthermore, Young Goodman Brown treats his Puritan community with respect, and appropriately so because he believes in righteous Puritan settlement. At the end of the story and his life, however, he views his community with contempt and even distrust or hatefulness in hindsight of the spectacle in the woods. Dee, howbeit, viewed her home, family, and community with contempt at the