Wifes Story vs Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Essay Example

Wife’s Story vs Young Goodman Brown The richness of fiction that developed during the long history of literaturebenefits from different elements of a variety of genres. Among them, science fiction is often the most curious genre to analyze due to the supernaturalism and detachment from reality that are being used to deliver the message of the author from a different point of view. Fantasy elements here often serve to broaden the usual picture of the world or conventional perception of the audience. In order to understand how the authors elaborate on their stories in the framework of science fiction, the two short stories will be compared and contrasted in order to investigate the utilization of characters, setting, historical time frame, and supernatural elements used. These two short stories are Wife’s Story by Ursula LeGuin and Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne that both utilize supernatural elements in order to translate the ideas of the authors to their readers in a different, unconventional manner. Elements of supernatural are obvious in both stories, even though they have different approach to representing them. In Wife’s Story, supernatural elements are showed as real, without a doubt happening events. At the same time, Young Goodman Brown doubts whether what he saw was real in the first place or if it was but a dream. LeGuin’s short story is deceiving as it starts with a seemingly realistic context, where a wife, never named, tells the story about her husband and the transformation that he underwent. Only later it becomes obvious that this transformation is not even spiritual as it seemed at the beginning but quite material: “his feet […] got long, each foot got longer, stretching out, the toes stretching out and the foot getting long, and fleshy, and white. […] The hair begun to come away all over his body.” (LeGuin, p. 2) This materialization exactly was the central supernatural element that the author used. Pumping anxiety but delivering small, insignificant details, LeGuin leads the audience to identify with the wife who tells the story and to see her husband in opposition, and only in the end it appears that the sides are reversed, that in reality her husband was human whereas she, her children, her sister and her pack were all wolves. As such, the characters are not supernatural but the transformation the wife’s husband undergoes and the point of view taken by the author are. Hawthorne, on the other hand, writes in a specific scene inside the short story, which does not seem believable at all. It all starts when the protagonist enters the woods and meets the characters that are elements of fantasy, as well, for example, the traveler who “was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him.” (Hawthorne) Further on, the events develop with flying and the gathering around the altar that looks like a sabbath of witches and vanishes once Goodman Brown calls out to heaven for protection. This whole scene, although not being mystical per se, is perceived as a supernatural by the protagonist who wonders if it was a dream or reality. For the author, the scene obviously held metaphorical sense of indulging in one’s self with the goal of assessing the inner values of a Puritan way of life and faith. Overall, Hawthorne uses not only supernatural setting but also characters who seem unbelievable in it, for example, townspeople in the middle of the forest, the old lady and the traveler who looks quite like the protagonist, as well as openly supernatural elements like flying staff, the altar, etc. Each of these elements used serve a symbolic purpose of self-questioning and finding the place in the contemporary society and faith. In LeGuin’s story, historical time frame is not specified, and it is obviously on purpose since it allowed the author to depict the story from the perspective of a wolf pack. Connecting the plot to the historical time frame would necessitate to describe the elements of daily life, which would give away the twist that the plot takes near to the end of the story. As such, avoidance of clarifying the historical time frame serves as a benefit to promote the plot, unlike the short story of Hawthorne. In the second story, the author depicts the seventeenth century New England, the Puritan village of Salem, obviously around the time when witch trials were commonplace. This is expressed directly: “Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village,” and via using the language close to the speech of the contemporary Puritans. (Hawthorne) The identification of the setting does not only serve to place the characters in the historical time frame but is also important for the development of the plot while the protagonist scrutinizes his own beliefs and Puritan faith in general and comes to skepticism after his journey into the woods. This way, Hawthorne’s positioning of the characters into a specific time frame is exclusively essential for the plot as the message of the author is centered around studying the hypocritical values and faults of faith of Puritan New England of the time. To summarize, both stories of LeGuin and Hawthorne have supernatural elements in them yet the authors use them differently. LeGuin concentrates on the point of view that is not usual for the audience and purposefully avoid indicating the setting and historical time frame in order to keep the mystery of the short story until the very end. Hawthorne, on the contrary, indicates the time and place as means for construing the contemporary reality and evaluating the values of the time, and includes specific scene, characters and separate elements to create the convenient ground for developing his idea of Puritan hypocrisy. As such, the different use of elements by the authors and their avoidance of using other elements, as well, effect the stories in different manners. It is connected to the varying goals the authors set before them and the audience: studying the inner conflicts created by transformation of self through the eyes of society and changing own attitude to the values and lifestyle that are conventional. Works cited LeGuin, Ursula. Wife’s Story. N.d. Electronic Source. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown. Online Literature. N.d. Web. October 21, 2010. . Read More