Young Goodman Brown

So a bit of a different update tonight. A short story I would highly recommend to anyone is the story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now the story was many things, partly Hawthorne trying to make amends for his ancestor's part in the Salem Witch Trials, Partly a critique of Calvinist and Puritan belief and partly just a beautifully spooky story about humanity. A journey has to be made by Goodman Brown through the forest late at night for unexplained reasons, in which he has to leave his wife, Faith, at home. He meets a man who looks rather similar to himself but is sinister, and ultimately confronts humanity as a depraved disease on the world. The night changes him forever and he can never see a fellow person again without thinking about their own, unspoken madness as well as his own deeds which, by the way are probably taking a second glance at another woman or lying. He loses his love for Faith.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out why she was called Faith. And why Nathaniel Hawthorne chose to send Brown on a quest and leave her behind.

The story can be interpreted two different ways a the end. Either that Browns loss of faith stems from the hopelessness in humanity, and therefore the only thing keeping us sane is the Hobbesian theory of a vital need to be kept at bay and under control, or that without being told what to do or having faith in something greater, the world is cruel and vulgar.

Now I would say that Hawthorne meant for the former point to be the one he wanted to make, but he chose to include the second around the fringe as well. I would say that while yes, it is occasionally difficult to accept, the whole of the world is worth experiencing more of rather than less. Even if it vulgarizes us a little.