Rip Van Winkle and Young Goodman Brown - Exemplars of the American Dream - Essay Example

Your Your Rip Van Winkle and Young Goodman Brown: Two Exemplars of the American Dream The AmericanDream has as many variations as there are individuals who came to the United States (or to the North American colonies) seeking to start a new life. There were Puritans who were so fed up with the British restrictions on their religion that they decided to set up a colony where they would be the ones who ostracized and tormented the heterodox. There were freethinkers who were so tired of being told how to worship that they established Rhode Island, whose guiding principle was absolute freedom of religious expression. In general terms, however, the American Dream represented an opportunity to begin civilization again, from scratch, without so many of the presuppositions and practices that had become entrenched in Europe and had engendered so many discontents. As one might imagine, it took a while for American literature to develop as an independent genre: the tasks of taking a continental wilderness and turning it into a habitable region, and then into an independent country, left scant leisure time for the generation of literature. However, as the young United States of American began to enter its fourth and fifth decades, some of its first major authors began to emerge. Two of these were Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and their writings began to define the American experience for the rest of the world, and show how the North American continent had shaped its colonists and citizens. "Rip Van Winkle" and "Young Goodman Brown" are two different takes on the changes that the American experience had on European sensibilities. According to John Hardt, both "Rip Van Winkle" and "Young Goodman Brown" contain examples of "paradisal skepticism," or "a retreat from the paradisal ideal with a recognition of limits in human knowledge" (Hardt, p. 249). In other words, both works show an attempt by the protagonist to encounter some sort of paradise on Earth, and both see that such a paradise is not possible, because of the restrictions that human nature places on our possibilities. In "Young Goodman Brown," Hardt suggests that the woods that Brown enters were once the Garden of Eden. However, the serpent (here, represented by the old man) has taken over the wilderness. When Brown leaves his wife, Faith, he also leaves his religious faith behind. The ensuing journey is one of instability, one that examines his knowledge (Hardt, p. 255). Once Goodman Brown emerges from this experience, he realizes the limits of his knowledge, and lives the rest of his life in fear. If one relates this to the idea of the American Dream, one can see Young Goodman Brown as the symbolic pioneer, heading out into the unknown, trying to make his fortune in an untouched wilderness. While he may have bold aspirations, his inner fears weaken him and keep him from fulfilling that promise. One can interpret this as meaning that the context in which most Europeans lived before coming to colonize the New World ensured that they would encounter failure in at least some of their ideals. Indeed, the same petty beliefs that held sway in Europe followed their holders across the Atlantic Ocean, as one might guess. Walter Shear has a somewhat different look at the significance of Young Goodman Brown's journey into the woods. He sees the separation of Young Goodman Brown from his wife as the creation of a psychological individual. Not only does he symbolically abandon faith, but he also leaves behind orthodox belief and worship practices (Shear, p. 545). He must fight with those that he encounters in the forest if he wants to retain his own morals and values. After this conflict, he returns to mainstream society, more conscious of himself and the way that he interacts with those around them. His transformation, according to Shear, is analogous to the transformation of Puritanism over time in North America, as the purity of its religious beliefs decreased over time, ending up in an embarrassingly hypocritical state of affairs (Shear, p. 547). In more of a psychoanalytical examination of the story, Edward Jayne views the journey of Young Goodman Brown into the forest as a ritualization of the "frontier challenge" (Jayne, p. 100). He forays into the woods and receives a series of tests, but then rejects the temptations that are offered to him in the woods, returning to town instead of sinking into what would have been, to him, a sad and sinful state of affairs. However, he is of two minds about all of this. While he does return to town and take up his obligations as head of household, according to Jayne, he hates these obligations (Jayne, p. 101). The implication is that the possibilities that were offered to him in the woods were compelling ones, tempting ones. One can look at this interpretation as an analogy for the conflict between Puritan ideals and the moral freedom that a wide-open continent represented. Whereas the Puritan faith required a highly ascetic state of moral affairs, the American continent had none of the preset conventions that held sway in Europe. As a result, many of the possibilities that colonists faced were vibrant temptations. The lack of institutional control, at least in comparison with the European continent, offered many chances for change. Young Goodman Brown trembled at this existential element of the American Dream and slunk back to his village. "Rip Van Winkle" is another look at the opportunities afforded by the American Dream. As Baym Nina wrote: Literature helped America define the Dream. For as long as America searched the veins of the wide fields and smoky mountains for a definition, writers broke into the imagination and aided us with the daunting task. Writers provided the experience of the dream, the adventures of the picaro to lead us on gently. (18) Rip Van Winkle, of course, has a twenty-year dream, which gives one a bountiful source to analogize the American Dream. Whereas Nathaniel Hawthorne was an Anti-Transcendentalist, embittered by his own experiences at the Brook Farm and thus skeptical of the possibilities of human nature, Washington Irving was more of a Romantic. He did not have a rosy-eyed view of human behavior and hits possibilities, and yet he did view the growing freedom of the young country as more of an exciting palette than did Hawthorne (Hardt, p. 253). In 1820, when "Rip Van Winkle" was written, the United States, at least in a literary sense, were still seen as a literary reflection of Great Britain: its writers were only beginning to emerge from the shadow of the iconic British authors. Rip Van Winkle was, of course, the embodiment of the American Innocent -- a bawdy, ne'er-do-well type likely to wander the town, providing entertainment for others, and yet eschewing hard work, sort of like a frontier Falstaff. When the story begins, Rip is "ready to attend to any body's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, it was impossible." However, his wife, the formidable Dame Van Winkle, is his opposite. She is a symbol of the Puritan and Quaker work ethic and embodies the ideals of a society that is strict and demands hard work from its members. The power of their opposition becomes so great that, one day, he picks up his gun and wanders into the woods. He encounters a strange group of ghosts and accepts their liquor, which sends him into a twenty-year nap. Ironically, of course, he wakes up and takes up right where he had left off. His wife had conveniently passed away, and so he took up carousing with the younger generation -- who were, of course, the same emotional age as he. His carefree lifestyle continued unchecked. One could interpret this as a warning about the dangers of the American Dream -- there were those who thought the new and fertile land would take care of itself, and that freedom from restrictions would mean a wonderful life, with a minimum of work. While Rip miraculously survives and even prospers in this way, his way of life is clearly a farce, as are those elements of the American Dream that promise prosperity in exchange for very little work. Both of these works look at various aspects of the American Dream. As American literature grew as a genre, these stories remained powerful signposts as to the way that American thought was changing in the aftermath of separation from Great Britain, both in the political and in the literary senses. Works Cited Easterly, Joan Elizabeth. "Lachrymal Imagery in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown'." Studies in Short Fiction 28 (1991): 339-43. Jayne, Edward. "Pray Tarry With Me, Young Goodman Brown." Literature and Psychology 29 (1979): 100-13. Hardt, John S. "Doubts in the American Garden: Three Cases of Paradisal Skepticism." Studies in Short Fiction 25 (1988): 249-59. Nina, Baym. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Shear, Walter. "Cultural Fate and Social Freedom in Three American Short Stories." Studies in Short Fiction 29 (1992): 543-49. Read More