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“a Rose for Emily, ” “Young Goodman Brown” and “Good Country People, ”

Good Essays

Isolation: Loneliness from Society The time moves on for all people. If we cannot come to terms with that, bad things can happen. A short story, "A Rose for Emil," by William Faulkner, was first published on April 30, 1930. William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He is one of the greatest writers in America and obtained Nobel Prize laureate. As he grew up in New Albany, Mississippi, the Southern society influenced to him.
Through his works such a Sartoris (book, 1931), The Sound and The Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (poem, 1930), The Sanctuary (1931), and A Famle (1954), he depicted chronologically the decaying Southern society. In other words, he mainly pointed out the vice of the southern …show more content…

“By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places—whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest—where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot” (332). Near the end of the story, Goodman Brown has seen the evil in every person, and it causes isolating of his life. In the story, the narrator poses an important question: "Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?" (Meyer 333). The choice is dream or reality. Whatever the reader chooses to believe, Goodman Brown's own horrible doubts create a central theme of the tale (Fogel 21).
Hawthorne’s mental and moral beliefs are revealed throughout “Young Goodman Brown.” Puritans believed that the fall of Adam was the inheritance of all men, and that redemption came only through Christ. Hawthorne came to believe that the fall was by human contrivance, that damnation is not inherited but chosen and is redeemable through human agency. (Adams 5)
The devil reminds Brown about the past and the devil knows his father and grandfather from past encounters. Theme is hypocrisy and deception that would describe the devil's temptations and promises to Goodman Brown, his father, his grandfather, and anyone else. Other theme would be isolation because of the location where Goodman Brown is at which is a dark forest where he is

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