A Comparison Of Gabriel Garcia Marquez And Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Nathaniel Hawthorne both use very unique writing styles. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote Young Goodman Brown. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was famous for writing stories using magical realism. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story was very dark and had to do with sin. Both authors wrote about dreams and used symbolism and imagery all throughout the two stories. In order to write both of these stories both of the authors had to use a ton of creativity. Although both authors wrote dream-like stories I believe Gabriel Garcia Marquez had a better writing style than Nathaniel Hawthorne. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is known for using magical realism in his stories which is a mixture …show more content…

The characteristics of the movement included an interest in the power of the individual; an obsession with extreme experiences, including fear, love, and horror; an interest in nature and natural landscapes; and an emphasis on the importance of everyday events. American Romantics in the early nineteenth century tended to celebrate the American landscape and emphasize the idea of the sublime, which glorified their beautiful home country. They also created the concept of an American Romantic hero, who often lived alone in the wilderness, close to the land. Young Goodman Brown fits into a subgenre of American Romanticism which is the gothic or dark romance. Novels and stories of this type feature vivid descriptions of morbid or gloomy events, coupled with emotional or psychological torment. The dark Romantics joined the Romantic movement’s emphasis on emotion and extremity with a gothic sensibility, hoping to create stories that would move readers to fear and question their surroundings. Goodman Brown’s encounter with the devil and battle with the evil within himself are both classic elements of a dark Romance. Hawthorne seems to suggest that the danger of basing a society on moral principles and religious faith lies in the fact that members of the society do not arrive at their own moral decisions. When they copy …show more content…

Young Goodman Brown functions as an allegory of the fall of man, from which Hawthorne draws to illustrate what he sees as the inherent fallibility and hypocrisy in American religion. Hawthorne sets up a story of a man who is tempted by the devil and succumbs because of his curiosity and the weakness of his faith. Like Eve in the book of Genesis, Goodman Brown cannot help himself from wanting to know what lies behind the mystery of the forest. And like Eve, Goodman Brown is rewarded for his curiosity with information that changes his life for the worse. In the course of the ceremony in the forest, the devil tells Goodman Brown and Faith that their eyes will now be opened to the wickedness of themselves and those around them. Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden and forced to undergo all the trials and tribulations of being human, and Goodman Brown returns from the forest to find that the joy in life has been taken away from him. He has become suspicious of those around him, even the woman he once

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