Rip van Winkle and Young Goodman Brown
Adam Stansell
Intro to Fiction
Dr. Archer
Rip Van Winkle and Young Goodman Brown: A story of runaway husbands and there similarities and differences.
These two stories by Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne respectively, illustrate different examples of men wandering away from home, for somewhat different reasons, with somewhat the same results with the exception of the overall outcome upon the men. Careful analysis of the two stories can reveal both the similarities and the differences between the two, and how those things are important to the story as a whole. Young Goodman Brown takes a look at the life of man after venturing into the woods in order to complete some unknown errand in the middle of the night. He encounters an old man who bears a somewhat chilling resemblance of himself, as well as several other townspeople that have some significance in his life. He reaches his destination, which appears to be some sort of ritual, where he and his wife, who is ironically named faith, are to be initiated into what can be assumed to be a witches coven, due to the witch trials that had taken place in the same town nearly 150 years earlier. Goodman Brown cries to heaven for salvation from this place, and the scene disappears. The following day, after returning home, he has lost all faith in humanity, including his wife. He spends the rest of his life living in paranoia, therefore, his “dying hour was gloom”. What we see in this story is a man, who may or may not have dreamed the scene in which he took part, but nevertheless, he loses his entire faith in everything that he had previously been taught. From his christianity to his faith in his marriage, everything falls apart in his mind. Hawthorne, known to write about the hypocrisy of the puritan system, may have been using this story as a way to bring forth doubt in the minds of his readers and make them question the very foundation of the lifestyle of the puritans. In the story of Rip Van Winkle, we see
Intro to Fiction
Dr. Archer
Rip Van Winkle and Young Goodman Brown: A story of runaway husbands and there similarities and differences.
These two stories by Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne respectively, illustrate different examples of men wandering away from home, for somewhat different reasons, with somewhat the same results with the exception of the overall outcome upon the men. Careful analysis of the two stories can reveal both the similarities and the differences between the two, and how those things are important to the story as a whole. Young Goodman Brown takes a look at the life of man after venturing into the woods in order to complete some unknown errand in the middle of the night. He encounters an old man who bears a somewhat chilling resemblance of himself, as well as several other townspeople that have some significance in his life. He reaches his destination, which appears to be some sort of ritual, where he and his wife, who is ironically named faith, are to be initiated into what can be assumed to be a witches coven, due to the witch trials that had taken place in the same town nearly 150 years earlier. Goodman Brown cries to heaven for salvation from this place, and the scene disappears. The following day, after returning home, he has lost all faith in humanity, including his wife. He spends the rest of his life living in paranoia, therefore, his “dying hour was gloom”. What we see in this story is a man, who may or may not have dreamed the scene in which he took part, but nevertheless, he loses his entire faith in everything that he had previously been taught. From his christianity to his faith in his marriage, everything falls apart in his mind. Hawthorne, known to write about the hypocrisy of the puritan system, may have been using this story as a way to bring forth doubt in the minds of his readers and make them question the very foundation of the lifestyle of the puritans. In the story of Rip Van Winkle, we see