"`Lo! there ye stand, my children…” In the story "Young Goodman Brown", the prominent theme is that everyone has a dark side. As the dark figure clearly states, "Evil is the nature of mankind." Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" describes the hunger for virtue people of the early 19th century had, and how that virtue is all but a dream, through his tone and imagery.
As the passage begins, the first word read is "Lo!" An audience reads this word, and immediately gets the feeling that someone of a supreme nature or of high power is speaking. "...[T]here ye stand, my children," again allows the reader to see that some sort of father figure is about to speak to his children. The next several words describe the harsh tone of how this "figure" is speaking. This dark tone coming from words like "deep and solemn" easily sets up how the figure is speaking to his children. However, the reader receives a glimpse of a past good in this devilish character. When Hawthorne writes that the figure speaks with "almost sad...dispairing awfulness," the audience sees that the dark creature at one time might have not been so melancholy, "as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race." This thought runs parallel to some form of biblical text where Lucifer, an angel of God, is damned out of heavens to become the ruler of Hell. Hawthorne's background of a religious family probably makes him knowledgeable about these histories. The phrase brings about a sense of the dark figure's previous peaceful past--how the figure was once a good soul, virtuous with the rest of the audience souls. The passage gives a down tone when it describes the feeling of the dark figure. One might also get a sense of the imagery the Hawthorne accomplishes when describing the distraught figure. The audience can see the creature talking with his deep dark voice, and the fear of what really is true about our society. The figure remembers being of an "angelic nature," how he too had a virtuous persona. Unfortunately, as the context of the passage conveys, there is a harsh reality that virtuous world is just a myth. This is against all of Young Goodman Brown's beliefs that there is no evil if one sets their mind to it, but the figure proves Brown very wrong.
In my interpretation of the story, I will be discussing three main topics: the beginning conversation with Faith, the devilish character, and Brown’s wife’s meaning in the story. Young Goodman Brown is about to take a journey like many others before him, across the threshold separating the young unknowing boys and the elderly sages. This, however, will not be without peril, because aging is a testing process defined by trial and error, and the errors’ prices are sometimes significant.
“Lead me not into temptation. I can find the way myself,” Rita Mae Brown once remarked. Temptation is all around, no matter where one might be, there is no use in going out and looking for it. For some individuals, the enticement is so strong that it has caused them to break away from the ties that once bound them to their upbringing, such as faith, but for others, it has brought them even closer to their faith. There is no questioning whether or not one would be strong enough to deny the temptation in order to remain pure, but, rather one’s faith is strong enough to go through the test that has been taking place since the very beginning when Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden of Eden. Tone and symbolism throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
Most of the works can be analyzed by one of the three critical approaches: traditional, formalistic or psychological approach. When it comes to Young Goodman Brown (by Nathaniel Hawthorne), I think that psychological approach is the best one to use. The story is all about the three components of our unconscious (id, ego and superego) and the constant battle among them.
The above quotation from Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is of central importance in analyzing the attitudes and ideas present throughout the story, though in a curious way. The quotation (and the story itself), on first reading, seem superficially to portray a central character's loss of faith and the spiritual tragedy contained therein. Rereading, however, reveals a more complex set of ideas, ones which neither fully condemn nor condone the strictly constructed dichotomy of good and evil that Hawthorne employs again and again over the course of Goodman Brown's journey.
Jack, R. E., Blais, C., Scheepers, C., Schyns, P. G. & Caldara, R. (2009). Cultural confusions show that facial expressions are not universal. Current Biology, 19 (18), pp. 1543--1548.
People have always gone out of their way to obtain what they desire in their life. Whether this obsession is out of greed or true necessity, a person will go to great lengths to achieve it. In the novel, The Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, we find this trait present within the characters: Lucentio, Hortensio, Gremio, Petruchio, and Katherine. Each of these characters has their own motivation behind their actions in this story.
In February 1957, a new flu virus came about in Asia officials predicted another pandemic. Health officials monitored flu outbreaks until a vaccine could be produced. Unfortunately the elderly immune system was too weak to fight off the flu about 69,800 people died from this majority were the elderly. A little over ten years after the second outbreak had happened in 1968 health officials detected the United States ano...
Haralson, Eric, and Kendall Johnson. "Daisy Miller." Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Feb. 2014 .
The story of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights has been one of the most influential and powerful piece of literature ever written. After being published, it garnered a lot of interest because of the theme that was deemed misleading and critically unfit for society. The main theme of the book revolves around the evolution of love, passion and cruelty.
complication. About 90 percent of the animals that are being tested are not even counted in the U.S. statistics alone without taking other countries into account
The oppression of women and their struggle for equality can be seen throughout several cultures, one specifically is set in India through the novel The God of Small Things. This struggle for equality is descriptively illustrated to portray the dynamic differences in social status that occur between men and women. Roy depicts the oppression that women experienced in India under the patriarchal system, while illustrating the glorification that patriarchy received which in turn hindered gender equality, as well as facilitated sexism toward females.
Most of the works can be analyzed by one of the three critical approaches: traditional, formalistic or psychological approach. When it comes to Young Goodman Brown (by Nathaniel Hawthorne), I think that psychological approach is the best one to use. The story is all about the three components of our unconscious (id, ego and superego) and the constant battle among them.
Young Goodman Brown The story Young Goodman Brown is about a man and his faith in himself, his wife, and the community they reside in. Goodman Brown must venture on a journey into the local forest, refuse the temptations of the devil, and return to the village before sunrise. The time era is approximately a generation after the time of the infamous Salem witch trials.
In "Young Goodman Brown" the theme is hypocrisy. Hawthorne writes in detail how hypocrisy can change a person for the worse. In the opening pages of the story you can see how hypocrisy is already starting to change Goodman Brown for the worse. As he starts out on his errand that he has to run, Goodman Brown decides to walk as Hawthorne puts it "A dreary road darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind." (141). The forest is an important symbol in this story. The forest symbolizes evil and it symbolizes evil because of the darkness of the forest. As Goodman Brown and his companion continue their journey through the dark forest Goodman Brown starts to realize this "errand" that he is running is no ordinary one. Goodman Brown knows that he is doing something scorned down on by Puritan beliefs as he says the following: "My father ever went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs. And shall I be the first of the name of Brown that has ever took this path and kept." (141). So basically what he is saying in that quote is that he knows what he is doing is wrong, but he doesn't care. Goodman Brown is hard to convince that his family and the Puritans in general are not as righteous and pure as he thinks they are.
"`Lo! there ye stand, my children In the first line of this passage, Satan is addressing the community of Salem village. He calls them `my children' making it seem as if he is there to protect or save them from the misery found on God's earth. He speaks to the people of Salem village in an `almost sad' tone in order to seem sympathetic or sorry for the downfall of mankind from good to evil. It appears that Satan is trying to relate to the human race through making it seem as if he was once good (`his once angelic nature'), and he went through what each one of them had or was about to go through in order to become evil. He then goes on to say that,`Depending on one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream' indicating that some of his listeners may, up to this point, still hope that goodness would overcome evil. Satan then brainwashes the community to believe that `evil is the nature of mankind' and that they are `undeceived' in coming to this conclusion. He repeats the word evil and say's that it is the only way that the human race as a whole can obtain happiness. In conclusion, Satan, welcomes them, once again, as his children, to sacrifice their souls to him through the `communion of your race'.