Well, leave it to Mr. Hawthorne to take my argument from me in the most aptly succinct manner...if Young Goodman Brown is not the perfect illustration of precisely what's wrong with Mather's On Witchcraft, call me a Devil and send me off to the stalks!
He illustrates the very hypocrisy on which I left off last week...that Mather is condemning these people (let's be frank, these Women more often than not) for precisely the very thing, the VERY THING, he recognizes in himself...is it not Puritan doctrine that we carry evil inside of us, in potential or action, irregardless of whatever good we may be able to bring to the table? Why then say that Puritans (their name alone, seriously...let's not go there) shall be responsible for the, pardon the redundancy, purification of this New World? Isn't that a lot to ask from evil? Or is Mather confused, as all other Puritans must be if he is their spiritual leader (of sorts, I know), and there is a dichotomy at work that has led them all precisely to this contradiction and to this problem...these trials?
It's a lot to take in, no doubt, but I for one don't believe calling oneself Goody will instill a sense of good, period. It's an innate ability, a kinship one must have with one's body and mind, and Mather, may he rest in some semblance of Peace and Dignity, was trying to fight the very notion of struggle and celebrate the very stagnation of a peoples' identity...Here we are in this new land, flawed and broken, exiled and lacking in resources, carrying the inevitable evil of sinners and attempting, as best we can, to bring fruitfulness and joy and Good to all around us. Pardon the expression: but I call bull. There is nothing holy about damning people on the basis of illusions and tales (very tall ones too), it is merely an attack on one's evolution as a being, on one's potential to be both good and evil, to weigh those options independently and with CHOICE, with a sense of responsibility that one must carry alone, and only alone.
It is not surprising to me that Goodman Brown, dream or no, ended up alone in those woods...because those woods, those are the woods of fear and hatred, the woods that Mather constructed, built from his very fingertips in his insane accounts of the so-called Witchcraft of Salem! Those woods Brown walked with the Devil are the woods we must traverse through life, through the toils and the tribulations, the passages of uncertainty, of that doubt that can blind us and paralyze us as I'm sure it must have frozen Mather. It's as if the trials themselves were created to HAVE the people confess evil...as though Mather (and here it is again) was projecting his own anger at carrying even the slightest hint of a Devil inside of him onto the others, to purify himself, become one of the Chosen. Are the trials then not completely foolproof? They become a trap for the good because they suck all good out and leave only this fabricated malice, this Malady that Mather tried so obsessively to control and destroy. Hell, I'd lose my Faith too...
Also (and my apologies for the ranting, truly)...why when Goodman Brown is supplicating his wife, Faith, to look to the heavens and repent...why is that when the spell is broken, and he's left alone? Hawthorne is very clever there, isn't he, to leave our hero alone the moment he needs the most comfort and security. This is what the Trials did. Instead of helping you, they locked you out...well, hung you, really, which might be a form of escape (but that's an entirely different conversation). In a very real way, this country was formed by fear...a fear of everything that consumed one until one didn't know what was real and what was imagined, what was the projection of our selves and how little we knew those selves, and how (pardon my French) fucking frightening that seemed.
Some say Hawthorne's short story is an allegory for Evil and Humanity's relationship with it...let's be more specific: it's an Allegory for America, for what religion did to those poor, helpless youths that grew into old men and women, that grew into generations, into families, into you, into me, into the Culture and Cult of the country...and where do we stand now? Just as Goodman, we are left alone, probably cold, miserable, unaware of what to do, too afraid to try anything for that Judgment and that Doom...and as Hawthorne puts it so genius...
For the "dying hour was gloom."
On that note, I am disappointed I wasn't a part of the conversation, as I'm sure these two entries would have benefited so beautifully from them...but alas, what we can do about the past if not correct the present tense of it? So here are my thoughts, rambled and disjointed they may be, on Mather and the poor, doomed Goodman Brown...
Let's leave on an equally important note, with a rather interesting find concerning Arthur Miller's The Crucible (which I promised I'd talk of, but found Goodman Brown to be too hot to pass up!)...I think the video says it all. But hey, be the judge yourself...just like Mather would have wanted you to be.
I love your perspective on the woods. It's really interesting to think of life as a place fraught with danger that we must traverse. Have you ever seen Sondheim's "Into the Woods"? One of the lines is, "Into the woods we go again, we have to every now and then." The play is based on facing the darkness in life, through this selfsame woods metaphor that you approach. I think that darkness is necessary to the finding and appreciation of light, and I think this is what you are talking about, both in the sense of intellectual illumination, and even spiritual growth. And feel free to continue ranting. At least you aren't descended from these crazy people. :)
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