Things Fall Apart vs. Young Goodman Brown: Comparative Analysis

Introduction to the Authors and Works

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) was a Nigerian poet, author, and professor who became renowned for his novel Things Fall Apart, written in 1958. This book is considered a cornerstone of African literature. Achebe, who was a chieftain of the Igbo people, wrote about his tribal society's traditions and the manner in which Western civilization—including Christianity—affected them. He also depicted the conflicts between traditional African tribal values and those of Western society, and was renowned for his incorporation of folk stories and the Igbo tradition of oral narration. Things Fall Apart focuses on Okonkwo, an Igbo tribal leader; it begins with his personal history and moves on to illustrate the influences and challenges of rapidly encroaching Western society, including both Christian missionaries and British colonialism.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was a nineteenth-century American writer from Salem, Massachusetts, who focused much of his work on Puritanism—a religious and quasi-political movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He particularly tended to highlight the hypocrisies between Puritan actions and Puritan beliefs, and often used such tensions as a focal point for discussions carrying a moral message or moral imperative. He is most renowned for his novel The Scarlet Letter, but several other stories and novels remain important, including "Young Goodman Brown." This short story engages with the implied belief that all humans are "depraved" unless they enter a "state of grace." The protagonist is originally a man of faith, but undergoes an experience in which he witnesses many of his friends and neighbors—including his own wife—engaged in activities in the forest that contradict his Christian beliefs. Calling upon Heaven for protection, he escapes, but his worldview is forever changed: he loses all faith in other people and in the supposed virtue of the civilization around him.

Chinua Achebe and Things Fall Apart

Achebe successfully demonstrates in Things Fall Apart the order present within Igbo society—particularly in contrast to the colonial portrayal of that society as anarchic and lacking in structure. The foundation of this order lay primarily in the religious beliefs of the Igbo people and in the authority of the clan. The Igbo believed that the will of Ani, the earth goddess, was communicated through the Oracle of the Hills and Caves and through Agbala, the female priestess. All matters related to communal and domestic life were understood as expressions of Ani's will, and the priest of the earth enforced the principles of behavior (Gassama & Saleh).

For example, when Okonkwo's father seeks to understand why his crops are not growing well, he consults the Oracle of the Hills and Caves for guidance. The Priestess tells him that his poor harvest is a consequence of his own laziness, not a lack of divine favor (Achebe, p. 21).

In another example, the Umuofia villagers were gathered by Igbo elders whenever important decisions—such as going to war—needed to be made. This gathering is one of several indications of the authority and power of the Umuofia clan depicted in the novel. Understanding the novel requires recognizing that the clan governs all of Igbo society. The clan is considered male in identity and traces its lineage to one common ancestor shared by all nine villages of Umuofia; each village has its own individual ancestors, who are the sons of that original ancestor (Gassama & Saleh). The clan is also understood as a community in which the ancestors continue to live among the living (Wren, p. 15). When a tribal woman is murdered by a neighboring village, the tribe is summoned, and Okonkwo is sent as an emissary; a settlement is reached in which the neighboring village surrenders a virgin girl and boy to Umuofia (Achebe, p. 11). This settlement was understood to reflect the religious prestige and the formidable magical and martial power of Umuofia: "Enemies of Umuofia respected it due to its prowess in magic and warfare" (Achebe).

The authority of the Umuofia clan is also embodied by the ancestral Egwugwu, who represent the living spirit of the dead fathers of the nine villages. Achebe makes clear that the Egwugwu are ordinary men, and even suggests that tribal women perceived them as such—one woman thought she recognized Okonkwo's walk in the second Egwugwu: "Okonkwo's wives, and probably other women too, must have felt that the second egwugwu had a springy walk like Okonkwo's" (Achebe, p. 79). Yet no woman spoke this observation aloud, because the Egwugwu were officially addressed as the spirits of the true ancestors, and to acknowledge otherwise was forbidden.

Rituals occupy a central place in Igbo society and religion. One such ritual is the Week of Peace, observed by villagers in the week before planting; it symbolizes gentleness and kindness. In the novel, Okonkwo violates this sacred period by severely beating his wife, and as a consequence is required to make a sacrifice of repentance to the earth goddess (Achebe, p. 26). This episode demonstrates that defying the order of the gods and the rules of the community is wholly unacceptable within Igbo society. Critics have argued, however, that with regard to the enforcement of sacred traditions and religious beliefs, there was at times an absence of nuanced understanding of justice (Gassama & Saleh).

The absolute finality of Igbo law is illustrated dramatically when Okonkwo's daughter Ezinma is taken by the Priestess of the earth goddess (Achebe, pp. 70–77). Ezinma is kept by the Priestess Chielo for an entire night, and the great warrior Okonkwo can do nothing but wait outside the cave for his daughter's return. She is released in the morning. This episode also raises questions about gender roles: whether Western gender conventions simply differ from those of the tribe, or whether the authority of the goddess transcends traditional gender hierarchies, Okonkwo is required to submit to the Priestess. Some critics read these moments as a challenge to his masculinity (Irele), while others argue that Okonkwo's intense preoccupation with masculine identity stems from the shame he carries regarding his father's perceived weakness (Irele).

"Pacification" was one of the methods by which British colonials governed and reshaped African societies, and specifically Igbo hinterlands from approximately 1900 to 1920. During Okonkwo's period of exile, his people become increasingly drawn toward Christianity, which Achebe uses to illustrate the power of Western influence. Okonkwo also learns that adhering to tribal traditions—such as killing a threatening outsider in accordance with the Oracle's directive—brings only catastrophe. While he is in exile, such a killing results in an entire village being destroyed by a small Western military force (Gassama & Saleh).

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Young Goodman Brown

Hawthorne's story is a multi-layered examination of Puritanism, organized religion, and the concepts of good and evil. As background, it is important to recognize that Hawthorne lived in Salem, Massachusetts, in the era after the Salem Witch Trials, with a clear awareness that those trials had been unjust and, in his view, evil. Hawthorne was so ashamed of his family name—and of a relative's participation in the trials—that he even altered its spelling. This theme of personal shame is woven throughout his novels (Guerin, 64). "Young Goodman Brown" has been of significant importance to many authors, from the nineteenth-century Edgar Allan Poe to the modern writer Stephen King.

As with any work of fiction, the meaning of the story depends upon the perspective of the reader. In the narrative itself, the protagonist leaves—for an unspecified reason—to travel into the forest at night. His young wife, Faith, asks him not to go, but he departs anyway. It is also established that Young Goodman Brown is a newlywed who is troubled by the sense that marriage and the intimacy of the bedroom are at odds with his Puritanical Christian faith. He is further unsettled by his wife Faith's admission that she has "dreams and thoughts of the kind that sometimes she fears herself" (Hawthorne, 74). It is partly this fear that causes Brown to begin perceiving evil everywhere in the forest (Ezghoul & Zuraika).

At this point, Hawthorne's use of allegorical naming becomes apparent—a technique similar to that employed in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, an allegorical tale written more than a century before Hawthorne and one with which he would certainly have been familiar. The protagonist's name is "Young Good Man," and his wife is named "Faith." When the story opens, Young Goodman Brown possesses Faith.

When he enters the forest, events grow increasingly strange and the story shifts into a fantastical register, complete with doppelgänger figures and witches' brooms. Young Goodman Brown eventually arrives at a clearing where a witches' sabbath is about to take place. He recognizes the assembled crowd as his own townspeople—friends and neighbors—and then, in horror, realizes that he and his wife Faith are about to be initiated into the coven. At this moment, Young Goodman Brown calls upon Faith: not his wife, but his religious belief itself. He is magically transported back to his own bed. When he awakens, he cannot determine whether the night's events were real or a nightmare (Fogel, 16), but he is permanently altered.

Despite the fact that his call for help was answered and he was rescued, Young Goodman Brown experiences no renewal of faith, no increase in religious certainty, and no apparent gratitude for his deliverance from what he deemed evil. It is also apparent that he behaved as a coward: he sought only his own escape and made no effort to rescue his wife Faith. In failing to save Faith, it seems that Young Goodman Brown also lost his own spiritual faith entirely.

The most prominent surface interpretation of the story is that Young Goodman Brown's trust in others is wholly and irrevocably destroyed. He no longer believes that his wife, friends, neighbors, or any of his fellow townspeople are truly good, Christian, or faithful to their Puritan convictions. As Ezghoul and Zuraika observe, Hawthorne intended for the reader to confront the reality of sin.

Conclusion

In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne works to show readers multiple views of Puritanism, presenting it as an outdated ideology. He suggests that Puritanism—and by extension any faith—must evolve and adapt in order to engage honestly with the realities of the world. From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, accepting others without judgment has itself become a kind of social ethic. In this sense, the modern world is one in which liberal thinking not only helps to neutralize rigid ideology, but also shapes people's attitudes toward religious questions (Ezghoul & Zuraika).

The contrasts present in Achebe's novel are considerably more difficult to rationalize. On one hand, the novel offers a largely unmediated depiction of a way of life entirely foreign to most Western readers. Okonkwo has several wives, participates in ritually required sacrifices—including the killing of the foster son he helped raise—and inhabits a world whose customs are, for many readers, deeply alien. This makes it difficult to accept without ambivalence that the influence of Christianity and the erosion of tribal traditions constituted a straightforward loss. Yet simultaneously, the novel offers a realistic and poignant description of a culture that has since vanished, and of a way of life in which people found meaning and happiness, even if differently from what Western readers are accustomed to. Okonkwo witnesses the disintegration of his tribe's traditions as his people adopt a Western worldview. He attempts to rally his fellow tribesmen to resist, but fails.

A key distinction between Goodman Brown and Okonkwo is that Okonkwo actively fights to preserve his former traditions, whereas Goodman Brown—despite being miraculously protected—makes no effort to change the world around him. Each ends as a tragic figure: one disillusioned and cynical, the other dying by his own hand.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. First Anchor Books, 1994. Print.

Ezghoul, Naim, and Malek Zuraika. "'Young Goodman Brown': The Close Lane." International Journal of English and Literature, vol. 1, no. 1, 2010, pp. 001–006. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

Fogle, Richard Harter. Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark. U of Oklahoma P, 1970.

Gassama, Mohamed, and Anwar Saleh. "Postcolonial African Literature: An Analysis of the Clash between Europe and Africa." Basic Studies in Humanities. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

Guerin, W. L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Harper and Row, 1985. Print.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." 1835. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, edited by Paul Lauter et al., 2nd ed., vol. 1, Heath, 1944, pp. 2129–38. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

Hostetler, Norman H. "Narrative Structure and Theme in 'Young Goodman Brown.'" The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 12, no. 3, Fall 1982, pp. 221–228. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

Irele, F. Abiola. "The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart." African Studies Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 2000. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

McCabe, Michael E. "American Literature Research and Analysis: Nathaniel Hawthorne 'Young Goodman Brown.'" 2010. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

Wren, Robert. Achebe's World: The Historical and Cultural Context of the Novels of Chinua Achebe. Longman Studies in African Literature, 1980. Print.