...1. Consider the significance of the names of the title character and his wife. How are the names symbolic? Young Goodman Brown and his wife Faith, have both symbolic names. Brown's name symbolizes youth and the good nature of humankind. Brown character is a "young man" in the story, and his youth suggests that he is still naive and innocent and he can easily be corrupted by the evil in the world. Faith's name, as Hawthorne wrote, "Faith, as the wife was aptly named", commend that Brown's wife symbolizes the hope and the innocence found in a young wife. Brown's faith in the goodness in life is symbolized through his marriage to Faith. Faith symbolize, hope and the absolute confidence in the goodness in the world, the honest and truthful belief in something. 2. List what you think each of these symbols stands for: the woods (setting), the time of day, Faith's pink ribbons, the Traveler's staff. The woods can be Brown's own mind, a place created by his subconscious, dark as the forest, where he questions his truths, his love for faith, and his beliefs on human kind. It is simply fascinating, how the forest closes behind him, taking from him the option of going back to his beliefs, once he had become unsure about them. The forest can also be the place, not where he questions but face the truth. We all tend to try to embellish the world around us, so that it meets our needs. Brown may find himself in a conflict between the idealized world he once idealized, and the world...
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...The Puritans are a group of English protestants during the 16th and 17th century who sought to purify the Church of England. They are a strong religious group who migrated to the America’s to escape religious persecution in what is know as the Great Migration to create land where they could be religiously free. In these Puritan societies they emanated a strong sense of faith but although they were strict and harsh, the Puritans did indeed embody many admirable traits. In Goodman Brown and The Minister's black veil one exemplary trait that is demonstrated through their writings is the puritans being very persistent in keeping their faith. Both characters in these texts the show the struggle of keeping faith after being exposed to evil side of mankind but are still able to look up to God. Another trait was how the Puritans were very aware and valued God’s presence in their life as seen in Narrative of the Capacity, From of plymouth plantation, and Burning of our house. Lastly, another laudable trait the Puritans depicted was...
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...Thesis: Throughout the short stories The Child by Tiger and Young Goodman Brown, it is apparent that each author attempts to prove the inherent evil nature of mankind. Regardless of the goodhearted nature various characters outwardly portray, they each have a dark side within themselves. This can be seen through the character Dick in The Child by Tiger and in the character Faith in Young Goodman Brown. In the beginning of each respective story, the reader is led to believe that both Dick and Faith are considered to be religious, kind, and credible individuals. However, by the end of each story, the reader begins to question true nature of each character and whether or not they are actually evil. Outline: I. Synopsis of The Child by Tiger and Young Goodman Brown II. Examination of Dick’s transformation from a good man to a murderer * Dick begins as a religious, gentle, role-model * The evil around him provokes his dark side to emerge III. Examination of Faith’s role in Young Goodman Brown * Her name is synonymous with trust, belief, and hope * When Goodman Brown sees her in the forest, he no longer trusts her or any of the other “good” characters from his village * He begins to believe that she has hidden evil inside and her “goodness” is just a façade. IV. Discussion of how characters react differently to evil and how the authors are trying to prove that evil exists within everyone. V. Conclusion on how common theme of the existence...
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...Young Goodman Brown dreamed the night in the forest is a question the reader must decide for himself. To me, it doesn't matter whether it's a dream or not because Young Goodman Brown believes in his heart and soul that it did happen, and this changes the rest of his life. Brown makes the decision to give up on humankind and believe his wife and friends are evil, and he spends the remainder of his life alone, feeling that evil has won out over good. The Puritans believed that all people are evil because of the "original sin" committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is only through belief in God and living a pure life that man can overcome evil. Brown's night in the forest, whether a dream or reality, takes away his belief in humanity. The Black Mass in the forest forces Brown to see himself as just one evil part of a corrupt race of sinners. Goodman realizes that Faith, his wife, is now a witch. In essence, he’s lost his faith. He then wakes up in the woods unsure as to whether or not it was all a dream. So there you have it, the age old “was that a dream” feeling when you wake up in a strange place, not knowing how you got there. Though, similar thoughts may include “where am I,” “What did I do,” and “What did I drink?” Either way, he’s in the woods, and once he arrives back in town, he can’t come to terms with what he has seen, and he lives his life out in gloom, unable to trust even his own wife. , I really want to question whether or not what Goodman saw was...
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...significance of the names of the title character and his wife. How are the names symbolic? * "Young Goodman Brown" as a symbol in the story. "Young" infers the title character is naive and new at life. "Goodman" suggests his self-righteousness thinking he is a good man. Furthermore, "Brown" indicates he is a commoner * his wife's name is a symbol. Goodman Brown leaves on a journey without Faith, his new wife. In the same way, the Puritans left their faith "at home" and set out on a journey apart from their bride, Jesus Christ. Finally, Goodman Brown's desire to journey without Faith leads to her sacrifice. 2. List what you think each of these symbols stands for: the woods (setting), the time of day, Faith's pink ribbons, the Traveler’s staff. - The forest is the home of the strange and threatening (Indians) and is also viewed as the home of the devil (there was probably some relationship to the Indians in their minds). It was the perfect setting for the trip that Brown (may) have made that night. * The pink ribbons show that Faith is fickle because she simultaneously begs Goodman Brown not to go into the woods and doubts herself * We encounter daily. For example, we are commonly tempted by our friends, just as Goodman Brown was. By having Faith and the townspeople turn to evil, Hawthorne shows how society hides behind a false wall. 3. What does Goodman Brown’s decision to go into the forest suggest about his character? Considering this, what is ironic...
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...Compare and Contrast “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Lottery” By: Melissa A. Reeves Professor Andrew Smith ENGL 102-B46 LUO Thesis Statement The stories “The Lottery” and “Young Goodman Brown” both appear to show that human behavior and judgment can be flawed, even if the person’s intentions appear good to them. There is a level of fear and underlying evil in Puritan settings in both stories. I. Introduction/Statement of Thesis II. Themes and Author’s Purpose A. The Lottery i. Just because something has always been done, does not make it right or just; following the crowd can be dangerously wrong and evil. ii. The author shows through symbolism and storytelling that people can be easily influenced by society and those around them. iii. Also, the themes or persecution is addressed. B. Young Goodman Brown i. The theme is that believing that you are a righteous person does not always make you righteous. ii. The idea of doing one evil thing, but justifying it because it is only one time and he will never do it again and will be a good man afterward is addressed. III. Conclusion Symbolism found within “The Lottery” and “Young Goodman Brown” Melissa A. Reeves Liberty University Professor Andrew Smith 08/03/2014 Symbolism is found within both stories “The Lottery” and “Young Goodman Brown”. In both stories, symbols help in conveying the theme to the reader. In Shirley Jackson’s...
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...My favorite Washington Irving story is the Devil and Tom Walker. In this story, the Devil makes a deal with Tom Walker and Tom ends up losing his valuable belongings, his wife, and his soul. Tom encounters the Devil in the woods. The devil offers him a sum of money, but Tom declines it because it means his wife will get some too. When his wife dies and his belongings are taken, he decides to accept the offer and become an usurer. He attempts to escape the devil, but when he makes an unjust decision, the devil finds him and Tom is never seen or heard from again. The story had a lot of metaphors. But they're used to reference characters, not a deeper meaning. The meaning of the story is not to be greedy. The author illustrates the dark side of greediness. He did a good job of convincing people and making the point. The characters were believable people. He showed what people in that position would realistically say and do. While the story was fictional, it was realistic in how it portrayed greedy people. A very interesting line in the story is when the narrator said "Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of his wife. He was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done him a kindness." This line illustrates that Tom was so greedy that he actually felt happy that his wife was dead because it meant he no longer had to share his wealth. This twisted outlook is what makes this story to...
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...stories are of young men who do something that is going to change their life for good and in the end could cause them to be known as an evil person. There are two men that I am about to write about that are going to make the decision of a life time and after they do there is no turning back to change what they did. The first story is of Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, this is a story of where man is being tempted by evil and is contemplating making a vow to evil. Young Goodman Brown is going to go on a journey, on this journey he must leave behind his wife. Not only will Brown himself be challenged on the trip, but Faith is also troubled by sleeping alone and is “afeard of herself.” Because Faith is Brown's wife, she brings to mind an earthly union that on this night will be interrupted. Faith is “aptly named,” however, because on a different level she also represents his spiritual faith. This indicates that tonight Brown’s faith may be challenged. On browns journey there will be temptation and evil behind every turn that he will take and Faith is feared that her husband will not return to her the same man. Young Goodman Brown has the same fears as his wife because he is feared that the devil will be close by on this journey that he is about to take and as he thinks this thought...
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...In the story Young Goodman Brown, the two major characters are Young Goodman Brown and Faith, who are married. They have been married for three months now and they seem to be in love. Faith is Goodman Brown’s soul –mate. She is getting used to being married and enjoying life. Her life seems to be going her way most of the time and she is just getting her life stated. Goodman Brown treats her like she is his world. He adores her and loves her innocence, purity, and young side of her. Young Goodman Brown is not exactly a hero. I believe he is trying to find himself in the story but I would not consider him to be a hero. Why you may ask? Well he sided with evil. He took the chance of disobeying the people he cared about and went against his religion. But, in some ways the way he found out who the people around him (his loved ones and his close friends) were. The truth was unveiled but only he could see it and by doing this he was a hero. He was a hero because he saw the truth and kept it as a burden in his life. He was forever changed. He was a hero for accepting the truth and moving on. One symbol in the story was the ‘traveler’s staff’. It was in some ways a serpent coming to tempt Young Goodman Brown. It showed that he was not strong enough to refuse the temptations of the devil. The serpent is used in many other stories to symbolize evil, such as Adam and Eve or even the Disney story of Aladdin. As you can see the serpent is used as a symbol of evil or the devil. Also...
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...Marlee Vlahos Liberty University DATE \@ "MMMM d, y" February 2, 2015 Young Goodman Brown & The Lottery A review of both stories In this essay I will take the time to review two stories both of the fiction nature. I will discuss the conflicts of both stories as well as the plot structure. I will talk about the characters and give my point of view. Both stories are very thought provoking which should make this very interesting to compare and contrast. In the story of “Young Goodman Brown” we can understand the setting from what the limited omniscient narrator is describing to us. The reader gets a visual of a spooky setting of dark woods in the nearby town of Salem. The first thing a reader would think of when they hear the word/place “Salem” is witches. So automatically becomes a Halloween type of feel. It is then discussed that the story takes place during the time of the witch trials. It is not spoken as to what season this takes place, but with the visual you get the reader can assume its fall. The forest, the time of the story and the location of Salem helps to make this story very believable. In “The Lottery,” we getting a different visual. As the reader the image you create of the setting describes is a small village in a small town in a very rural areal. The feeling you get from the setting described is a feeling of everything revolving around the good harvest of their crops. The author paints a setting of a town of people doing a lottery that you...
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...Critical Reading 1. Preview. Look “around” the text before you start reading. ... 2. Annotate. Annotating puts you actively and immediately in a "dialogue” with an author and the issues and ideas you encounter in a written text. ... 3. Outline, Summarize, and Analyze. ... 4. Look for repetitions and patterns. ... 5. Contextualize. ... 6. Compare and Contrast. When you write about literature . . . Some Tips for Academic Writers Sentence Style 1. Use simple sentences as rubrics (pointers). 2. Use compound sentences to suggest balance and to present pairs of ideas of equal value. 3. Use complex sentence to emphasize the most important ideas and to subordinate less important ideas. 4. Avoid "empty" sentence frames that say little or restate the obvious. 5. Use present tense when referencing details in a literary work except for passages written in the past tense. 6. Incorporate short, key quoted phrases into analytical sentences. 7. Avoid the use of such words and phrases as "you" and "the reader" that often lead to wordiness. 8. Avoid the phrase, "In conclusion," when opening the concluding paragraph. 9. Avoid gratuitous complements and superlatives. Paragraph Development 1. Use Pattern 1 paragraph frames for most paragraphs in the body of academic essays. 2. Begin body paragraphs with claims as topic sentences that repeat key concepts from the thesis sentence. 3. Always introduce the speaker, context, and/or significance of block quotations. 4. Always...
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...McKinsey 11/1/15 Young Goodman Brown Goodman Brown displays both innocence and sin as he battles between believing in the overall goodness of the people in his town and life, and believing that the devil is responsible for taking over the people around him and their minds. Throughout the story it is shown that the people Goodman Brown loved may not be as innocent as he originally thought, he is shown that people can easily be corrupted and that his sense of right and wrong might not always be correct. He faces many conflicts in this tale and often chooses between good and evil, not always picking the same side. Through the use of symbolism, Nathaniel Hawthorne develops...
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...After reading the short story, I would have never concluded that everything that happened was a dream. I concluded this from a statement. It states,” Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of witch-meeting. I don’t understand why the story starts out with Goodman Brown leaving Faith. Why does the author want get rid of Faith so quickly? It states,” he had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep though, and closed immediately behind. When reading this statement, I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen to Young Goodman Brown since it said it closed immediately behind. It leaves me wondering what happened....
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...Rudy hated to go home with his left ear bleeding and his right eye almost closed. He hated to think about what awaited him at ‘Sunshine Avenue,’ well rather a who, and that who was the sully gang. Being scared and tired, Rudy stared off into his world trying not to thinking about the gang. Every Tuesday and Thursday he would take the ‘Nightmare path’ as he called it and make his way home. As Rudy walked home he shivered at the thought of the path he would have to walk home. The trail was out of school, walk down ‘Sunshine Avenue,’ take a left and then go into the dark alleyway where he would get beat up by the ‘Sully gang.’ The only good thing that comes out of the horrible experience, is when he would walk by Mrs. Corners yummy smelling yellow daffodils after he came out of the dank alley. As he closed in on the alleyway, he remembered what his dad told him, “If you can’t beat em, run so you don’t get clobbered.” As Rudy slinked around the bend and into the alleyway, he saw the gang standing by their snazzy scooters and sucking on their lollipops. He scooted up by them and stood still, and then Bow the leader of the Sully gang came over. “Hey 4 eyes,” he said and then a nasty smirk appeared on his face, “Ready to eat fist? Because that's what's being served,” With that Bow swung and hit Rudy and gave him a nice shiner. The next hit was coming in fast and Rudy tried to defend himself but split on a banana peel, but Bow missed. After that Rudy got and idea, what if he could...
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...When Goodman Brown meets the man whom Hawthorne later reveals to be the devil, Hawthorne draws attention to the man’s staff, which resembles a black serpent. The staff strongly suggests the man’s supernatural and sinful nature, and it connects “Young Goodman Brown” to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve’s temptation by a serpent to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Goodman Brown and Faith, like Adam and Eve, are tempted to do what is forbidden in their community and lose their innocence for the sake of knowledge. The staff of the devil in this story is described as having, “…the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent.” (13) This is directly...
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