I really like thinking about, and arguing about, the dichotomy of good versus evil. I don’t believe there can be one without the other. And as Brandi said in her comment, it’s similar to the “can’t have women without men and vice versa” argument. And the men versus women argument stems back to the creation story in the bible. It’s all Eve’s fault, therefore all women are cursed. It seems like the same sort of original sin that plagued Nathaniel Hawthorne. Something that you are born into, cannot ever escape from, and that envelops your entire life and mind. That kind of curse could really drive someone crazy!
Nathaniel Hawthorne seemed to ponder the same questions that I brought up in my last blog. (How people who are so called "good" can kill other people because they are "bad". What does that make the good people? Why do they get to be "let off" for doing bad things? Just because they think they are doing “good”? Who says?) As the proverb goes, “the sins of the father are passed down to the son,” right? In this case, Hawthorne’s great grandfather started it by trying and witnessing each of the executions of guilty witches in Salem.
N. Hawthorne might agree that no one was really “let off” for what happened in Salem. To me, it seems he tries to work out his issues with faith in his story “Young Goodman Brown.” Throughout, Goodman Brown knows the errand he is endeavoring on, yet he lives his “Faith” at home (in this case, both his wife and his religion are his “Faith”). My favorite line came right at the beginning when he says, “‘Poor little Faith!’ though he, for his heart smote him. ‘What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too’” (65). He knows he should not have left her to go into the forest! He should not leave his Faith! I’m sure it was taught to never stray from the “good” path. Temptation was rarely allowed at all, that’s why the puritans were so closed up, and they did not even allow the thought of temptation. Hawthorne completely changed that, he allowed temptation to Goodman Brown. And thus introduced doubt.
I thought of an analogy in class about doubt and the time before doubt. When you are looking at a specific object on the wall or floor, just one object, really staring at it and focusing on it and nothing else, then you (without removing your focus) slowly start to widen what you can see in your peripheral vision. And then, oh, there’s something white over there, I can see it’s outline and color while keeping my focus on the same object. Now, when you try to put all of your focus and concentration back on the first object, you can’t not see the white something on the outside of your focus. That’s doubt. Once it’s observed, it can be unobserved. (At least that’s how it happens for me! Am I crazy or does this happen to other people too?)
Anyway, Hawthorne introduced doubt into the lives (however fictitious) of his puritan characters. Goodman Brown began doubting his Faith when he saw her in the woods. Obviously Goodman Brown believes he needs his Faith to fight off the devil, he even says it, “‘With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil’ cried Goodman Brown” (70). He knows he needs faith, yet he abandoned it, and now it is tainted by what he saw and can’t un-see. (Didja follow all that?)
It seems like Hawthorne had some issues with faith and the devil and the dichotomy of the two. How closely related are they? Can you have one without the other? Is it a never-ending continuum? If you get too far in one direction, does it turn to the other polar end? If you are too Christian that you reject everything else, are you just as bad as the devil? I dunno. I’m still trying to work this all out.
(I found this picture btw. No credit to me)
Maybe I’m wrong about Hawthorne, maybe he truly believed they were witches and thus cursed his family as they hung?
