Allegory in Hawthorne and Irving
Both Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown and Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle are allegorical writings, with a symbolic meaning beyond what we read on the surface. Young Goodman Brown is a moral story in the form of the "hero quest," which is a search for self, for understanding. After a meeting with the devil, his pride affects his relations with the community, eventually making him an exile in his own community. In "Rip Van Winkle," Hawthorne uses Rip's sleeping and waking as an allegory for the conflicts between men and women, parents and children, alcoholism, superstition, and the struggles of new nation to find her way. Goodman Brown exchanges a "parting kiss with his young wife," Faith, (p.633) when he sets out on his journey at sunset. Brown's new bride, asks him not to go on his errand. "My love and my Faith... this one night I must tarry away from thee." (p.633) When Brown says his "love" and his "Faith", he is talking to his wife, but he is also talking about his spiritual "faith" to God. When Goodman Brown meets with the Devil, his excuse for being late was because "Faith kept me back awhile." (p. 634) There is a double meaning to his words, because while his wife Faith physically prevented him from being
He "was no politician...the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of government under which he had long groaned... petticoat government." Satan tells Brown that his father and grandfather took the same path years before, "They were my good friends...and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path..." Young Goodman Brown refuses to believe it, however, countering with "I marvel they never spoke of these matters...we are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness." (p.635) One day while hunting, with his dog Wolf, he meets a dwarf-like stranger dressed in antique Dutch fashion and helps him carry a keg. After drinking some of the stranger's liquor, Rip falls into a deep sleep for 20 years. When he awakens the world has changed. He is an old man with a long, white beard, his wife is dead, his children are grown, and the village people changed but familiar. "Their dress...was of a different fashion...the very village was altered." (p. 696) Much in the way that America was also now different from England, and was striving to find herself. It is separate, independent, although that wasn't what the freedom that mattered most to Rip. Rip Van Winkle, on the surface is about a man who falls asleep in the woods for twenty years. Rip is a good-natured Dutch-American, married to a nagging wife in a village on
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 943
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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