Free Example of Young Goodman Brown Essay

Hawthorne recurrently applied symbols and figurative speech to offer extra implication to the realistic understanding of his writing. To some extent several of these motifs and themes transpired once more in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” The main character, Young Goodman Brown, is an outstanding illustration of symbolism being employed in the narrative. The name Goodman Brown means that he is certainly a good person, which is an allusion to his Christian conviction. In the beginning of the narrative, he is mentioned as young Goodman Brown with the stress on “young”, which is an indication to his virtue and signifies that he is blameless and pure. After he goes into the woods, nonetheless, he is no longer called young Goodman Brown, rather Goodman Brown, as if the virtuousness and innocence he formerly had is  no longer in him (Hawthorne 115).

Although Faith is an ordinary female name, it has a significant meaning in this narrative. Her name, by itself, indicates that she is a symbol of decency and the Christian being that young Goodman Brown abandons when he heads off for his journey. Faith is represented as a young bride; she puts on a cap with pink ribbons, which are a symbol of her virtue and lightheartedness, almost resembling a child. Faith initially symbolizes her husband’s naive spirituality when the story begins (Hawthorne 207). Historically, Christianity has been associated with obedience and devoutness rather than reason or logic. When Goodman Brown detects the pink ribbons in his wife’s hair, he is receptive to her purity, thus when he comes across a pink ribbon, which is owned by her, hanging on a tree twig in the forest, he develops reservations towards his wife’s Christianity faith and the faith of all the people around him (Hawthorne 209).

The forest is an essential emblem in the story “Young Goodman Brown”. The narrative is written in the olden times, when the forests were considered as immorality places where witchcraft frequently occurred. This is emphasized when Goodman Brown notices the urban inhabitants amongst him in the forest and is dismayed to notice them, his spouse (Faith), and the cleric as well. It is in the woods where young Goodman Brown meets the person with a snakelike staff. Snakes represent the devil, and this implies that the woods were the place of evil, sin, and temptation. All these forms of symbolism and imagery allude to the theme of religion, as well as appearance vs. reality (Hawthorne 120).

Poem: "Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen

In Owen’s poem, "Dulce et Decorum est,” the words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. It signifies the ancient lie: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” as Owen puts it, which is translated into English as: “It is sweet and fitting to die for your nation”. Wilfred Owen says this is a lie. Owen's poem is recognized for its dreadful imagery and disapproval of war. Several of poets, as well as Wilfred Owen, took part in the war, struggled in the war, and a few like Owen, died in the line of war. The verse of these "war poets", as they are later phrased, reveals a first-hand description of the viciousness and the destruction of war in a world, which still thought that war was laudable and proud.

Owen employs images like dreams, “In all my dreams” (15), “smothering dreams" (17), "Men marched asleep" (5), and also uses imagery to make some scenes clear and to show the ultimate irony and the moral of the poem; it is not in fact a "sweet and meet". For instance, at the end of the poem he reveals that most of the men who die in the war are “innocent” (24), and “children” (26), who have realized that war entails “the high zest” (25), making them "ardent for some desperate glory" (26). Owen employs irony to make the poem effective. "Dulce et Decorum est" is a reactionary poem whereby Owen reacts to a horrible war and to the lie being told about war after facing the bitter reality. However, Owen’s poem relates to the story of two young lovers, whose story coincides with the poem, “Dulce et Decorum est”. This points out to the two famous lovers, Romeo and Juliet, who eventually die, their deaths ultimately uniting their feuding families. These two lovers’ story is said to be the story of more woe than any other.

Short story: “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

“A Rose for Emily” employs metaphors to portray a theme of demise and decay. These descriptions eventually display the evolution of Ms. Emily to her mental illness and her death. Faulkner employs metaphors to generate this state of disorder in his readers. After smashing and going through the entrance of Ms. Emily’s house, “everybody was left in shock…seeing the intense…fleshless grin” (Faulkner 96). This picture creates an image of a skeleton in the position that has been rotting after a long time. The writer’s imagery generates this disgusting thought of cuddling a corpse. Faulkner’s tale is basically on the decomposition of the brain, body, and community setting.

Miss Emily's house is a significant icon in this narrative. For nearly all of the narrative, the readers, similarly to the town’s inhabitants, merely look at Miss Emily's home from the exterior coming in. Since the house was constructed in the 1870s, it is said that Miss Emily's father should have been doing quite fine for himself subsequent to the Civil War. The home is an enormous image of Miss Emily's separation (Faulkner 52).  Death symbolizes this ruthless truth that Emily can no longer be reliant on anybody, and that she is actually by herself and secluded from the entire society. She does not take her father's demise in a good way. She gets into a descending twirl of anguish and madness (Faulkner 93). Faulkner’s successful use of this imagery showed Ms. Emily’s transition from a prominent townsperson to a mentally ill and decrepit person, which ultimately led to her demise (Faulkner 101).

Lime, an ashen powder applied in corpses to conceal the bad odor, and arsenic, also used for disposing awful smells, are the tale’s most ghostly signs. Satirically, it appears that the lime was scattered unsuccessfully. The stench of the decomposing dead body of Homer Barron stopped dispersing into the locality of its own will. Or perhaps the neighborhood simply got accustomed to the odor. The lime is a sign of a futile effort to conceal something awkward and scary. It also resembles the manner, in which the town in that era executed things (Faulkner 120).

Another symbol of time is Emily's hair. The city initially uses her hair to tell time, and afterwards, when she goes into her residence after her hair has changed to "a strong iron-gray, similar to the hair of a vigorous man" (Faulkner 64). After Emily stays in her house for a long time, the town utilizes Tobe's hair, “starring as it changes to grey as well,” to inform the readers of the many years Emily has hidden in her house. The fiber of Emily's hair noticed on the pillow close to Homer also indicates time, although exactly what time it indicates is difficult to tell.

The Pocket Watch is also a symbol employed in the story. The fight involving the ancient times and the upcoming events daunts the present activities. Once associates of the Board of Aldermen go to Emily’s house to find out about the payment of taxes ten years prior to her demise, they take notice of the ticking of Emily’s pocket watch, concealed somewhere in the tucks of her garments and her body. This is an indication to the readers that for Emily, time is both, an inexplicable "indiscernible" power and one, of which she has constantly been intensely conscious. With every second that passes, her opportunity for contentment declines (Faulkner 59).