The Use Of Characters By Hawthorne And O'Connor To Teach Morality
Since early Christianity, a doctrine of seven deadly sins has been taught. Pride, or hubris, is considered to be the sin that pushes you further away from God then any other sin. This sin, whether the sinner knows it or not, tries to put man in the same position as God. In Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, we are introduced to two characters that show this quality of hubris. Both short stories are supposed to be satirical of people that practice moral self-deception. People, who preach of kindness and love, but put themselves on a pedestal above other people. In the case of Goodman Brown and the grandmother, this moral self-deception ...
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times that sounds absurd, but at that time it was a real fear, to think that they would be corrupted by these demonic beings and they would be kept from heaven.
Goodman Brown was a church going man and most people would have thought him to be good. He came from a lineage of good Christian people, who the old stranger says, “I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem: and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village”. This statement represents what it meant to be a good Christian person at the time. Persecution was normal to this society. The fact that it was his lineage that served the faith so well puts him in a good position towards his own salvation. He wants to be sure that he his guaranteed salvation, so he goes to the forest that night trying to test his own destiny. The old stranger represents the devil and he tires to tempt ...
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in a crazed, bewildered state, “staring around him like a bewildered man”. He, on his journey home, sees both the preacher and the deacon going on about their business as if nothing had happened. “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.” this passage describe the change in Goodman after the night in the woods. He goes from being a very trustful man too not trusting anyone even his wife. So, he spent the rest of his life thinking morally that he was better than everyone else in the town was. This shows his hubris that was there all along but really comes out at the end. It is this extreme ...
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"The Use Of Characters By Hawthorne And O'Connor To Teach Morality." Essayworld.com. July 10, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Use-Characters-Hawthorne-OConnor-Teach-Morality/86568.
"The Use Of Characters By Hawthorne And O'Connor To Teach Morality." Essayworld.com. July 10, 2008. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Use-Characters-Hawthorne-OConnor-Teach-Morality/86568.
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