Similarities in the Way the View of the Two Writers Belonged to Different Epochs - Research Paper Example

Thesis: Though the two writers belonged to different epochs and literature trends, there are some similarities in the way they view the reality and reflect it in their symbols. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” Nathaniel Hawthorne is traditionally included into the constellation of the founding fathers of the American novel together with Washington Irving and Edgar-Allan Poe. During the period this genre was being developed, it did not have any rigid structural or stylistic principles, and therefore it retained the features of traditional essay of the Enlightenment epoch with its combination of tale, parable, and edification. As far as Hawthorne’s short stories are concerned, the influence of essay tradition is particularly strong in them – in his stories, description, contemplation, and observation are always more important than the plot development which is often of more or less conditional character. Nathaniel Hawthorne was interested, above all, in the mysteries of human soul and personality, and the symbols of his novels and short stories is often dark and gloomy. The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne strike a balance between reality and myth, truth and symbol, fantasy and routine. In fact, the writer often prefers using metaphors, comparisons, and symbols rather then developing an original plot. N. Hawthorne turns metaphors and symbols into plots, and at the same time the basis for moral speculations: e.g. a priest whose face is covered with a veil (“The minister’s black veil”), a snake hiding in a man’s chest (“The egotism, or Bosom serpent”), the protagonist talking to his twin in the looking glass (“Monsieur du Miroir”), s girl made of snow plays with other children (“The Snow Image: A Childish Miracle”). However, all these examples are not mere descriptions of some weird cases, and neither are they simple allegories. Being initially a metaphor, it turns into a generalizing symbol, and thus a weird case is accepted by the reader as a phenomenon of the moral life of the modern society. Hawthorne paid attention predominantly to the symbols connected with the concepts of spirit, soul, consciousness, sin, guilt, etc. The system of these categories determines the actions of almost all of his characters. For N. Hawthorne, the spiritual life of America, its morals and principles were projections of the inner morality of every person. This inner morality was pictured by Hawthorne as a deep winding cave inhabited by both evil and good thoughts, and only in the most remote corners of this cave, there is pure good which is the real, innate nature of men. Though these good thoughts are not revealed often, it is them that provide humans with an opportunity to raise to the top of morality. N. Hawthorne believed that changing the reality should begin from releasing these initial roots of good. According to him, the ties connecting people are of many kinds, and belonging to different spheres of human activity. However, the most important ones are those from the sphere of spiritual existence, and it is these ties that make it possible to transform individual morality into the common one. In Hawthorne’s short stories, sin and lapse from virtue are not depicted directly, and exists as abstract information, hint, or legend. Of particular interest to Hawthorne, however, are the moral consequences of sin. Similarly, very important for him is the intent, sometimes even of a subconscious character. That is, perhaps, what differs him from the puritan writers, because for them the very facts of sin and punishment were of paramount importance, and the motives for sin were neglected whatsoever. In contrast to them, Hawthorne was interested in motive, intent, and the feeling of guilt. Whereas the Puritanism proclaimed that people who have not sinned are sinless, and are therefore separated from the sinners, N. Hawthorne could not accept this approach. He thought that there are almost no sinless people (both in deeds and thoughts), and the rest of people are all sinners – who have either actually conducted the sin, or intended to do so. Let us remember the symbols in Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”: Hester Prynn wears a scarlet mark on her dress as she had sinned and was convicted; the Reverend Master Dimmesdale has a scarlet mark on his skin as he had sinned but was not convicted; and finally, the god-fearing and pious people feel tingling in their chests as they have intended a sin, but haven’t committed it yet. For Hawthorne, it is impossible to differentiate between religious fanaticism and pure faith, sin and the happiness of love, good and bad person. For instance, in “Young Goodman Brown”, the deacons “have drunk the communion wine” with the devil; town’s minister and Deacon Gookin are obviously acquainted with the devilas well; and even Goody Cloyse, “a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth”, meets the devil in the woods as “her old friend” and offers him to take Brown “into communion”. …irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see, that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. (Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”) In Hawthorne’s works, one of the key principles is the one of indefiniteness which is revealed in plot, composition, characters, and especially in the system of indefinite symbols that can have multiple meanings. Sometimes it seems that the prejudices and legends are mixed with reality, and therefore the reality is pictured to the reader as a manifold phenomenon, allowing applying multiple criteria, evaluations, and interpretations. Indefiniteness, intuition, and imagination were the basis for Hawthorne’s symbols. All in all, Nathaniel Hawthorne inclined to interpret the reality symbolically, and very often he is called the father of romantic symbolism in American literature. His short stories and novels are saturated with symbols – simple and complex, universal and local ones, but almost always – indefinite. Hawthorne’s symbols are inseparable unities of an idea and an image that can only exist together. In “Young Goodman Brown”, the symbols reflect the problem of moral speculations. In fact, the entire short story is a moral allegory, and the characters of the story embody particular ideas. However, it is hardly possible to discover these ideas if we try to read the short story only on ideological level. For example, the protagonist in “Young Goodman Brown” embodies purity and innocence, his wife – faith, but what exactly happens in the forest during the meeting with the devil looms indefinite, and the final of the story is not very clear either. The protagonist of the story leaves his devoted wife Faith to go to the forest, which is for Hawthorne a typical place for some evil deeds, and is therefore a powerful romantic symbol. The man he meets in the forest is devil – a symbol of evil in itself. “Young Goodman Brown” is considered “the most direct, unabstracted depiction of a devil that exists in Hawthorne’s fiction”. (Maus 2002, p. 76) It is very symbolic as well that Goodman Brown and devil resemble each other, and it makes the reader think that, indeed, there are no utterly good or utterly bad people, and very often it is very hard to differentiate between the good and the evil in one’s actions and thoughts. This idea is conveyed as well by the dialogue between the characters during which the devil clearly shows to Brown “the models of good that Brown upholds are actually in the service of evil. This technique not only destroys their value as positive contrasts to the devil, but makes Brown passively complicit, since one after another of the exemplary Puritan figures are shown to be evil at the core”. (Maus 2002, p. 76) In N. Hawthorne’s short stories, and in “Young Goodman Brown” in particular, it is implied that the author believes in existence of some supernatural power that guides a man, some universal law that is out of our hands, and that we cannot understand, much less control. Hawthorne believes that this power ensures the regulation of human existence, so that is does not turn into complete chaos. However, he does not know whether this power is evil or good, and moreover he is not even trying to answer this question. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”: similarities of her symbolism to that of N. Hawthorne In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the plot is very simple, as well as in N. Hawthorne’s stories: all the inhabitants of a small village are waiting for the annual lottery which is the main event in their lives. Nobody really remembers when and why this tradition emerged. On the day of lottery, everybody gathers in the square to find out the name of the person who has been chosen… and then stone him or her to death. This short fantastic story with an unexpected ending is full of dark gothic symbols. Same as in N. Hawthorne’s works, the symbols in Shirley Jackson’s stories are very manifold. There are many viewpoints concerning the system of symbols in “The Lottery” – some view them as a symbolic representation of the relations of the South America with the Northern states. “Although Jackson was writing about a highly mechanized farming community in the twentieth century, the world she described was organized around an atavism. Jackson’s agricultural community sacrificed a resident every year to ensure that the village’s crops would be bountiful”. (Walker 2004) Some state that the story’s symbols are entirely based on the writer’s personal experience claiming that people were hostile to her , and “the normal activities that took place in “The Lottery” [symbolize] her getting married and having children like ordinary people”. (Xanders 2007) Jackson’s symbols are of different character. Though some of them are often regarded as mere reflections of Shirley’s own life; it would be wrong to state that this was the only source for her symbolism – as it was pinpointed by her husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, sometimes the works of S. Jackson were misinterpreted because her “fierce visions of dissociation and madness, of alienation and withdrawal, of cruelty and terror” were understood as “personal, even neurotic, fantasies”, whereas they should be perceived as “a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb”. (Hyman 1965, p. viii) Apart from these features of the contemporary society, Jackson reflects the position of women in the society, and feminist critics often claim that the symbols in “The Lottery” are the embodiment of “female characters’ isolation, loneliness, and fragmenting identities, their simultaneous inability to relate to the world outside themselves or to function autonomously”. (Hague 2005) However, it is not only about the position of females, - her story symbolizes the society in the whole, “for her apocalyptic consciousness, sinister children, and scathing portraits of nuclear families and their suburban environments, her depiction of a quotidian and predictable world that can suddenly metamorphose into the terrifying and the bizarre, reveal her characters’ reactions to a culture of repression, containment, and paranoia”. (Hague 2005) The name of Tessie Hutchinson in “The Lottery” is also very symbolic as it is associated with Anne Hutchinson who was convicted as a heretic by the Puritan community in 1638. Moreover, it certainly unites S, Jackson with N. Hawthorne who paid a considerable attention to the Puritanism in his works. Very significant is a quite unexpected symbol of a child as a destructive force – innocent children who at the beginning of the story seem to play gathering the stones into a pile all of a sudden become ruthless murderers throwing stones at people. This makes S. Jackson’s views very close to those of N. Hawthorne, as they convey the same idea – nobody in innocent and sinless. Therefore, though N. Hawthorne and S. Jackson lived in different epochs, their symbols are sometimes very similar. References 1. Hague, A. (2005), “A Faithful Anatomy of Our Times: Reassessing Shirley Jackson”, Frontiers - A Journal of Women's Studies, 26, 2 2. Hyman, S. E. (1965), Preface. In: The Magic of Shirley Jackson, by Shirley Jackson, Farrar, New York. 3. Maus, D. (2002), “The Devils in the Details: The Role of Evil in the Short Fiction of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol and Nathaniel Hawthorne”, Papers on Language & Literature, 38, 1, p. 76. 4. Walker, C. (2004), “The Effects of Brown: Personal and Historical Reflections on American Racial Atavism”, Journal of Southern History, 70, 2. 5. Xanders, X., The Lottery and Shirley Jackson. Planet Papers. Retrieved March 05, 2010, from the World Wide Web: http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/5000.php Read More