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Perception In Young Goodman Brown And Richard Cory

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Everyone has a different perception on what perceptions means. According to Merriam Webster, perception is “the way you think about or understand someone or something.” Many stories and poems focus on the theme of perception. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson are both favorable examples. In this essay, the topics of perception and how it is used in the story and poem are explored based on textual evidence. In YGB, the main character, Young Goodman Brown, has an experience that changes his perspective on all of his town’s people. The town of Salem Village, in Young Goodman Brown’s eyes, is a pure town of good people with good intentions and a clear devotion to God, especially his wife Faith. YGB says that Faith is “a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven,” (Hawthorne 7). The one night he speaks of is his journey through the woods with a fellow-traveller; said fellow-traveller is perceived in this story to be the Devil. As he is travelling, he encounters a few townspeople …show more content…

Richard Cory is a man who is greatly admired and slightly envied in his town. The townspeople state, “In fine, we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place,” (Robinson 11-12). The townspeople “worked, and waited for the light, and went without the meat, and cursed the bread,” just so they could have the life of Richard Cory. (Robinson 13-14) The poem ends by saying, “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head,” (Robinson 15-16). This poem points out the fact that many people believe that others are happy by the front they put forward. Although it was perceived that Richard Cory was a happy man with everything he could want in the world, he was actually depressed or messed up enough to put a bullet through his

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English 102 Fiction Essay Compare and Contrast: Young Goodman Brown vs The Most Dangerous Game Justin C. Blanton Liberty University English 102 Fiction Essay Compare and Contrast: Young Goodman Brown vs The Most Dangerous Game Both stories are about fears in men.

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I founded interesting that the author noticed that the Salem village is the center of the witchcraft misbelief. By everything the evil noted in Goodman Brown; it makes sense that Hawthorne would use a Salem village for this story. In my reflection about the story, I realize that is a place where the events continuously happened because it has a different incidents or devices that are widely found in the literature and recognized as motifs appear. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "

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He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.

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The speaker of the poem believed that “He fluttered pulses when he said ‘good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.” The reader understands that Richard Cory was greatly admired. The folks would stare at him and thought him to be charming. From this, one can infer that this man had everything going for him. Not only does Robinson illustrate Cory as a perfect man, but also paints the image that, “He was rich-

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(pg. 453)” Young Goodman Brown is a man living in the puritan era who has a wife and family, and is deep in his Christian faith. Young Goodman Brown lived in a town that is all connected to through the local church. Early in the story Young Goodman brown would set out to meet a person who would later be labeled as the devil by one of the locals. Young Goodman brown would have a vision of everyone in his community that would show him their wicked sins.

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The speakers see Cory as someone who is reserved when he talks and will not speak to low life’s like them. But unlike other rich people of the time Cory does not have these kinds of attributes; instead he is calm and would speak first to people on the street. He was also nice to people when he would talk to them. But the line that advocates that something is off about Cory is “But still he fluttered pulses when he said,/‘Good-morning,’(6-7). This suggested that he was nervous when he talked to people because maybe he was scared of people judging him, which is what the whole premise of this poem talks

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Hawthorne says, “Something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree” Faith’s pink ribbons symbolize purity. In the beginning of the story was Faith had her ribbons she was pure but at the end of the story when Young Goodman Brown saw Faith’s pink ribbon come down from the sky it represents how she succumed to evil and Hawthorne lost both his faith and his wife Faith. The third example of how Hawthorne uses symbolism to show the theme good versus evil in the story “Young Goodman Brown” is when the devil is telling Brown and Faith that they will have a new perspective of life, a life where everyone sins. In the beginning of the story Young Goodman Brown saw his family as godly and he saw Faith as pure but the devil shows him that his views are naive and the devil gives him the capability to see the dark side of everything and everyone.

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During his journey of sin, Young Goodman Brown and the devil come upon Goody Cloyse, Young Goodman Brown's catechism teacher, and, still believing that she is a “pious and exemplary dame” Goodman Brown tries to stay away from the woman by pleading with the devil “I shall take a cut through the woods… being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with” (3). Because of Young Goodman Brown’s beliefs of her innocence, it is even more jolting to him when she “knows her old friend,” the devil, and speaks about stolen broomsticks, recipes including “the juice of smallage and cinquefoil and wolf’s-bane,” and even the same devilish meeting that Young Goodman Brown and his accomplice are to attend (3). With signs that all point to sin and witchcraft, Young Goodman Brown’s shock in saying “That old woman taught me my catechism” had “a world of meaning” as he cannot possibly believe that a woman known to be so holy and righteous in the community could be so evil within. As Goodman Brown moves past the shock of Goody Cloyse’s actions, he is exposed to the sins of the holiest members of their Puritan community, the minister and Deacon Gookin. While Goodman Brown shamefully “[conceals] himself within the verge of the forest… he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin” who speak of the same evil “meeting” as Goody Cloyse and even remark that “several of the Indian powwows” will even be present (4,5).

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However, Cory was discontent of his social status. He ventured into town and politely greeted his bystanders, but the townspeople admired him for his wealth and social standing, not for companionship or friendship. This isolation is revealed in the last line of the poem when Cory “Went home and put a bullet through his head” (16). He appeared to be happy, but appearance can be deceiving. It is concluded that Richard Cory was a lonely man; he was financially rich, but socially deprived, thus directing him to commit suicide.

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Goodman Brown enters the forest knowing of such evil, he states in the story “what if the devil himself should be at my very elbow” (Hawthorne 322). Goodman Brown sees the minister and Deacon Gookin as well as many other townspeople making their way into the dark forest towards the ceremony. At this time, Nathaniel Hawthorne is displaying that many people of all ranks in religious and governmental society are sinners despite their external appearance. He holds on to the thoughts that as long as Faith remains holy, he shall find it in himself to resist the temptations of evil, but when he sees the pink ribbons from Faith’s cap his Christian faith is weakened. Hawthorne is using Goodman Brown’s wife, Faith, as a symbol of his own when he yells out “my faith is gone!”

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There would be no “Young Benjamin David Goodman Brown” if not for the most character’s personal struggle to come to a decision what he can do. At the tip of this tale we are able to ne'er make certain if sensible or evil won the interior fight waged inside Young Benjamin David Goodman Brown, however Hawthorne makes it copiously clear that Brown was scarred always by his expertise. when returning to Salem from that fateful night, Benjamin David Goodman Brown becomes misanthropically. Benjamin David Goodman Brown not has any religion in his fellow municipality, seeing that they need all danced with the devil at just once or another. He has lost his innocence; he has lost his religion.

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