Young Goodman Brown Versus the Fall of the House of Usher...

Angela Higgerson Dr. Lewis ENGL 2041 3 March 2010 In both, Nathanial Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† and Edgar Allen Poe’s â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† the protagonists, Young Goodman Brown and the narrator experience a journey into the subconscious. Both stories have an overlap that blurs the boundaries of reality and fantasy. It is truly the supernatural aspects of these two stories that force the protagonists and the reader to delve into the realm of the subconscious and to scrutinize good versus evil and real versus imaginary. Both stories have a setting of gloom and foreboding that alludes to where the stories are heading. In Young Goodman Brown, his wife Faith pleads with him to postpone†¦show more content†¦In â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† the story starts with the narrator saying that he is overcome with a feeling of gloom upon first seeing the house. He compares the windows to vacant eyes. The narrator goes on to tell how the house appears to him but then tries to explain it away as his overactive imagination. Both stories tell of supernatural occurances. Hawthorne’s story has many examples of the supernatural. One of the examples, the serpent staff the traveler has seems to come alive however, he reasons it away as the way the light or lack thereof making it appear alive. Another example is Hawthorne’s use of Salem, Massachusetts which was infamous for the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne also uses Goody Cloyse’s recipe of all plants associated with witchcraft and her talking of her missing broomstick that she accuses Goody Cory of stealing to suggest witchcraft. In reality, Sarah Cloyse was accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials and Martha Cory was hanged for witchcraft. When the traveler took a maple branch to serve as a walking cane, the twigs seemed to wither at his touch. All of these, Hawthorne uses to weave a tale seemingly of supernatural happenings while also suggesting it is actually Goodman Brown’s subconscious creating the wh ole event. When BrownShow MoreRelatedDifferent Colors Of Darkness By Nathaniel Hawthorne And Edgar Allen Poe995 Words   |  4 Pagespath to hopelessness can take many different routes. These contrasting motivations first surface in the authors’ tones. Hawthorne’s solemn words hearken to the Puritan mantra of stringent moral standards and the belief of a wicked world. In â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† the protagonist learns about the evil concealed in the hearts of people he reveres. In the same way Brown’s exposure robs him of hope and joy, Hawthorne’s themes of evil’s pervasiveness rob his stories of optimism. His disheartening opinion