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Duality of Character in Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown," and in Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The House of Usher," there are main characters who have several characteristics in common. The main character in Hawthorne's story possesses a duality of character and undergoes a life-changing experience. The title character in Poe's story has a similar duality of character; he, too, undergoes a transformational experience that may be seen as representing duality of character as well. Both stories have a dreamlike quality that adds to the atmosphere of the story; it also leads the reader to question whether the events have actually occurred, or if they were somehow the products of a hallucination or dream state, perhaps even supernatural in nature.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's story, "Young Goodman...
At the beginning of the story he leaves his wife, Faith, home as he goes off to travel at night. Faith is worried and tells her husband this, explaining that she feels troubled. This provides a sense of foreshadowing to the story, preparing the reader for what it to come (Harmon & Holman, 235-236). Goodman Brown reassures Faith that everything will be fine and takes off on his trip.
During this trip something will happen that will change the way Goodman Brown looks at his wife, at those he has known all his life, and at the way of life in general. What happens to him is a test of faith. Whether it is a dream, a hallucination, or a real event are never quite made clear to the reader. In fact, it does not really matter whether the events of the night occurred in reality or in his imagination; the point is that he is changed forever. What Hawthorne makes clear here is that within each individual there is the capacity for good and evil. Even those we think we know well, whether they are parents, spouses, or respected members of the community, may be hiding deep secrets. There are different senses of double images in this essay. For example, one could see the duality of good and evil within the…
Works Cited
Harmon, William, and Holman, Hugh. A Handbook to Literature, Eleventh Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: 2009. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." In Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry,
Drama, and the Essay, Second Edition, ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. 93-102. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The House of Usher." Retrieved electronically on July 23, 2012 from <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/932/932-h/932-h.htm>. Web.
Hawthorne Author Nathaniel Hawthorne's literary works constantly reference ideas of the supernatural and the religious ideas of the Puritans who colonized the United States. Of particular interest to Hawthorne is how these two things work together in that time period. Many of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works take place in Colonial times, a good century before the author himself was born. His own ancestors were active participants in Puritan society, even serving as
Man of the Crowd By Edgar Allan Poe (1840) The story significantly depicts not only the preoccupation of the 17th hundred London issues and a trend brought by the progressive industrialization of time, but speaks so much relevance in our modern time as well. The epigraph which sums up the very essence of the story explains the dynamic of a human being too busy to mingle with the crowd for fear of