Goodman Brown Vs Misfit

A Good Man is Impossible to Find

Ever since the creation of Adam and Eve, humans have been innately born with the ability to sin, making it impossible for any of their descendants to truly be good men. Due to this fact, there is only one truly good man in “Young Goodman Brown” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and the man they refer to is God himself. However, the Misfit and Goodman Brown both have the wrong idea that they are Christ like figures and draw false comparisons between themselves and Jesus Christ. The authors use these two men to illustrate how quickly one forgets what it means to be “good”.

First of all, to understand what Christ is like, one must look at the opposite; sin. Original sin, to be exact. It is the idea that every

Just like the crucifix is where Jesus faced his trials and was saved through his faith, the forest is where Goodman Brown faces his and it’s also the stage where the Misfit faces his. By contrast however, Goodman Brown does not conquer his demons and the Misfit rejects God’s love, using a bullet rather than words. In a lot of literature, legends, and fairy tales, nature, more specifically, forests, represent places where one will undergo trials or tests; where unconsciousness and mysteriousness stand. "The forest harbors all kinds of dangers and demons, enemies and diseases” (Biederman) In Hawthorne’s story, the forest symbolizes thought and self-regulation. Within the forest, the Puritan civilization ends as the darker forces of the shadow express themselves. (Maus 2005) In the story of “Young Goodman Brown”, the traveler carries a serpentine staff and towards the climax of the story, he makes a new stick by stripping twigs, wet with dew. However the moment his fingers touch them they withered and dried up. The traveler is as destructive as they come; he is feared by Puritans. The whole point of the Puritan’s journey into that forest, although each individual’s is different, is so they can get a glimpse of this traveler and what he is capable of and in turn realize how much they actually need God. The serpent on his staff is a symbolization that he is like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. (Shmoop Editorial Team) Within O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the forest has more of a threatening, rather than creepy ambiance. The forest is hunched over the ditch where the family is trapped. O’Conner describes the forest as “tall dark and deep”. (70) The forest shows the impending doom the family faces because this is where everyone except the grandmother is dragged to be