Engineer Hawthorne Blog Post

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” makes brilliant use of symbols and language to show the dark side of human’s. His narrative is based on bringing to light the Unpardonable Sin committed by civilization in violation of the human heart. In the opening of the story, the characters have names such as Young Goodman Brown which is the husband and Faith is the wife. Also, the couple are newlyweds and use loving words while addressing each other, “Dearest heart,” “My love and my Faith,” “dear husband.” The husband is going into the forest on a mysterious errand which worries Faith. Young Goodman feels guilty for not heeding her advice not to go into the forest, “Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand!” Young Goodman ventures into the forest on the instances of an elderly man, who is going to show him the dark secret deeds of the church going civilization. More symbols are used to identify the devil. The “fellow-traveller,” is the devil in disguise and holds a staff which Young Goodman notices immediately, “remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent.” The Unpardonable Sin described here is Goodman going against his Christian faith and beliefs by following the devil into the wilderness, "My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept." The devil is trying to convince him that his community is not all pure and have committed sin too. When he sees a pink ribbon which was worn by Faith in her hat, he is struck by despair and is more willing to follow the devil into his lair, “The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon."My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given." During the gathering where everyone from the village has assembled and Goodman has looked up to as a child, the devil pokes the final stake into Goodman’s heart, "There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth;” The devil has convinced and opened Goodman’s eyes that “Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race." This ugly truth revealed Goodman returns to his village and his faith in his community and church people is destroyed, “Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself.” When his wife Faith with her pink ribbons, looks at him with joy, “But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.” “it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.” When he died, “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”

In “The Birthmark,” the Unpardonable Sin is Aylmer’s quest to achieve human perfection at the expense and life of his beautiful wife Georgiana who has a birthmark. Aylmer  is a scientist who thinks he can play God and control nature, “Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature.” Aylmer is obsessed with removing the mark upon her cheek as he considers it a defect of nature and he remarks, "Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?" She is surprised by his request, because she believes that it is a “token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts and symbol of her existence.” But Aylmer believed that “affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her countenance even hideous.” Aylmer saw the birthmark as symbols of evil and human imperfection, “In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death.” Georgiana knows that removing the birthmark will kill her, but out of love for her husband agrees to have it removed to please him. Aylmer is delighted and begins a grand experiment in a secluded room. Aylmer is successful in removing the mark and remarks, "My peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!" But a great tragedy unfolds and she is dying, “Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!" Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame.” This violation of the human heart destroys both; Aylmer as he has lost his wife due to his manic obsession and Georgiana has lost her life, “The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.”

 “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” is a story of two soldiers who survive and are returning home injured from battle. On their way, the elder of the two men Malvin, who is severely wounded and feels his end is near, “Reuben, my boy," said he, "this rock beneath which we sit will serve for an old hunter's gravestone.” Malvin believes that he has been defeated by the wilderness and Indian’s and his time is up, “There is many and many a long mile of howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it avail me anything if the smoke of my own chimney were but on the other side of that swell of land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than I thought." Malvin narrates the story of how, "it is now twenty years since I escaped with one dear friend from Indian captivity near Montreal. We journeyed many days through the woods, till at length overcome with hunger and weariness, my friend lay down and besought me to leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we both must perish; and, with but little hope of obtaining succor, I heaped a pillow of dry leaves beneath his head and hastened on." Rueben asks, "And did you return in time to save him?" malvin replied "I did," answered the other. "I came upon the camp of a hunting party before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot where my comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and hearty man upon his own farm, far within the frontiers, while I lie wounded here in the depths of the wilderness." Reuben vowed to return to save or bury Malvin if he were alive, “he vowed by the blood that stained it that he would return, either to save his companion's life or to lay his body in the grave.” Malvin’s daughter Dorcas on hearing the news of her father not returning is considered whether he was given a Christian burial, “Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that Roger Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible to bestow.” The Unpardonable Sin is Reuben not keeping his vow to return to bury Dorcas’s father as promised, “He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood.” The feelings of guilt were overwhelming, “Reuben, while reason told him that he had done right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors which punish the perpetrator of undiscovered crime.” Reuben’s procrastination kept him from following up on his, “deep vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out of the wilderness.” Reuben’s guilt was beginning to take its toll, “for Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually made him a selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply except where he saw or imagined some reflection or likeness of his own mind.” Reuben’s goes into the forest with his family and surprisingly finds himself at exactly the same spot he had left Malvin to die. The oak is a symbol of strength and sustenance and used to demonstrate that the will of man could endeavor the most hostile of elements. In this case, the oak was a reminder that Malvin’s spirit was still present and waiting for Reuben to complete his vow of conducting a decent burial. By accident, Reuben had shot his son who had fallen dead at the very same spot where his father’s bones remained. This was the curse that Reuben had to suffer for violation of the human heart, “His sin was expiated,--the curse was gone from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood dearer to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to Heaven from the lips of Reuben Bourne.”