Similarities Between Young Goodman Brown And Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

The Devil can be beautiful, after all, he was God’s favorite.
Looks can be immensely deceiving, even the Bible has many verses about how not everything is really what it seems to be, such as, 1 John 4:1, Matthew 24:4, 2 Corinthians 11:14, and the ever so famous, Genesis 3:4. A warning that can be seen in both, “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, is that not everything that is charming is impeachable. “No wonder, for even Satan masquerades himself as an angel of light,” 2 Corinthians 11: 14. Both Faith, in “Young Goodman Brown” and Arnold Friend in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” give the appearance that they are innocent, much like Satan does. “Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap,” in the beginning Faith’s innocence is very much in tact, and her husband, Goodman Brown, sees her as nothing less than an angel on earth.

Once Young Goodman Brown is in the woods, he comes across his innocent Faith’s symbolic ribbon of innocence, it “fluttered down, through the air and caught on a branch of a tree. A young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon. ‘My Faith is gone! There is no good on Earth!’” is Goodman’s last call out to his dear Faith as he realizes that there truly cannot be a person that is so pure on this cruel earth, As for Connie, she yells out at Arnold “Shut up! You’re crazy! People don’t talk like that, you’re crazy!” A little while later, she cries out to her mother one last time, only now realizing that she does in fact need her mother, and that she wishes she had stayed away from all the dangers that come with growing up too fast. Although these characters’ epiphanies come at different times, they both, tragically, come too late for them to save themselves from their alluring