Comparing Evil And Innocence In The Film 'Young Goodman Brown'

Chad Wright

Mr. Smith

Senior comp.

11/9/16

Evil Conquers Innocence

Evil can lie within the most innocent people, this is shown in the fictional film The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, and the short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In both the short story and the movie the author and director make the choice to use symbolism and imagery to further develop the theme that evil is mainly within ourselves. The story and the film both contain a main character that endures a journey confronting the conflictions of evil. The story “Young Goodman Brown” explores Young Goodman’s conscious which illustrates the struggle he faces with differentiating right versus wrong and good versus evil on his journey to be at peace with the

Night Shyamalan the director uses color to represent good, evil, and innocence. The color yellow symbolizes innocence and purity. This is shown in the film when the villages territory is marked by yellow flags surrounding the whole area. The yellow of the flags represents purity as well as innocence as the foundation of the village was based on the idea of being free from sin and all of the violence in the world. The elders of the village fled their modern world and memories allowing them to then create their own settlement built on being innocent and pure to the evil of sin. Another example of yellow representing good or innocence is when Bryce Dallas (Ivy Walker) has to take a journey into town to retrieve medication for the man she loves who has been severely injured in a merciless stabbing. When Ivy begins her journey into the forest she wears a cloak that surrounds her whole body. The cloak is yellow, the safe color. This cloak is to tell any wandering eyes in the forest that she means no trouble and is not to be harmed. On the other side of the spectrum the color red is representative of evil, sin, and the loss of innocence. For example, when Noah continuously stabbed Luscious, Noah became covered in blood causing him to symbolically lose his innocence. Later in that same scene, Ivy finds Lucious laying in his own blood and she then touches him and gains a coating of red, at this moment she has lost her innocence because like Noah, Ivy has been introduced to evil for the first time. Another way red stands for evil is shown when Noah gets free from being held captive by the elders and goes looking for Ivy. In the woods he wears the costume of the feared beast, a red animal costume. This represents Noah being evil as he has now become a monster in the eyes of the entire