For many years there have been people writing horror stories and through the years these people have learned many different ways of writing and representing evil that will draw the reader in and perhaps even scare them. In the stories of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates and “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne there is a reoccurring representation of evil. The authors have found several ways of representing the evil; for example, through symbolism, using references and allusions, just telling us, and foreshadowing. These are just a few of the ways the authors have represented the evil that is so influential in these horror stories. To begin, the authors use symbolism to represent evil in both “Where
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The allusion in “Young Goodman Brown” is the staff of the man in the woods with Goodman Brown. “…was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent” ( Hawthorne 169). This representing not only an optical illusion of a snake but also an allusion to the evil snake in the Garden of Eden, which led to the down fall of human kind and the man with the serpent staff will be the down fall of Young Goodman Brown. Another allusion in “Young Goodman Brown is Martha Carrier and Goodie Cloyce were two of the witches killed in the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne also alludes to King Phillip’s war, “…it was I that brought your father a pitch pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village in King Philip’s war (Hawthorne 170). This allusion and the one about his grandfather and the witch trials gives us a background of the evil that has been in Goodman Brown’s family for generations. One of the allusions in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is referring to a scripture that says just that. Arnold Friend’s car has numbers on it that have been said to represent scriptures in the Bible and other things as well. One of the scriptures the numbers could represent refers to the earlier mention of the scripture that the title is mentioned in. Arnold …show more content…
In the end there are many ways the authors represented evil in “Young Goodman Brown” and in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” However the authors tell us about the evil the ending point in both stories is to teach a lesson about evil. Whether it’s Hawthorne with the devil, faith, Indians and witches teaching us that faith is not good enough if it is in things of this world, or Oates telling us that you should not be running around doing stuff you are not supposed to be doing evil is a part of life and if you are not careful you will fall a victim to it. Both authors also let us know that things are not always what they seem it could be a man in a mask or an old lady who teaches catechisms, people are rarely who they seem and we should be careful. Both stories have been thought by some to be dreams to teach the dreamer a lesson, but neither author tells whether this theory is true. In the end both stories give us lessons of evil and we should consider them to mean much more than what is written. Authors use symbolism, foreshadowing, allusions to make the readers read in between the lines but also so that every reader gets a little something different from the story which is the overall beauty of
The allusion in “Young Goodman Brown” is the staff of the man in the woods with Goodman Brown. “…was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent” ( Hawthorne 169). This representing not only an optical illusion of a snake but also an allusion to the evil snake in the Garden of Eden, which led to the down fall of human kind and the man with the serpent staff will be the down fall of Young Goodman Brown. Another allusion in “Young Goodman Brown is Martha Carrier and Goodie Cloyce were two of the witches killed in the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne also alludes to King Phillip’s war, “…it was I that brought your father a pitch pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village in King Philip’s war (Hawthorne 170). This allusion and the one about his grandfather and the witch trials gives us a background of the evil that has been in Goodman Brown’s family for generations. One of the allusions in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is referring to a scripture that says just that. Arnold Friend’s car has numbers on it that have been said to represent scriptures in the Bible and other things as well. One of the scriptures the numbers could represent refers to the earlier mention of the scripture that the title is mentioned in. Arnold …show more content…
In the end there are many ways the authors represented evil in “Young Goodman Brown” and in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” However the authors tell us about the evil the ending point in both stories is to teach a lesson about evil. Whether it’s Hawthorne with the devil, faith, Indians and witches teaching us that faith is not good enough if it is in things of this world, or Oates telling us that you should not be running around doing stuff you are not supposed to be doing evil is a part of life and if you are not careful you will fall a victim to it. Both authors also let us know that things are not always what they seem it could be a man in a mask or an old lady who teaches catechisms, people are rarely who they seem and we should be careful. Both stories have been thought by some to be dreams to teach the dreamer a lesson, but neither author tells whether this theory is true. In the end both stories give us lessons of evil and we should consider them to mean much more than what is written. Authors use symbolism, foreshadowing, allusions to make the readers read in between the lines but also so that every reader gets a little something different from the story which is the overall beauty of