Hawthorne wrote Young Goodman Brown in 1835, some 6 years before Emerson's Self-Reliance. Still it is obvious from the text that the notion of self-reliance was, if not named, very much alive. In the text we encounter Goodman Brown - a pious puritan settler - as he embarks on a strange and perilous journey into the woods surrounding the settlement. Hawthorne, being a harsh critic of the puritan society from which he himself derived, uses the story as an allegory, a metaphor, for the necessity of facing your internal demons and doing it alone. The Puritans believed that the wilderness was the home of the devil and his minions (Indians, wild beasts and the like) and

as such was a place to be shunned. Still, Goodma

In comparison I feel that these 2 texts read with the overall theme of self-reliance in mind goes to show that this philosophy did not arise from one day to the other. It slowly formed itself at the base of the American culture and literature in particular played a key part in this manifestation. Self-reliance defined the thought of American exceptionalism to the point where it gave birth to the American dream. Literature was itself influenced by these developments, but it also helped further them by spreading the above-mentioned notions to the common people. In any case the 2 texts are among the best American literature I have ever read.

Samuel L. Clemens first published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884, a time where the idea of self-reliance was firmly established in the minds of the American people. The narrator and main protagonist Huck Finn is a young boy already introduced to the public in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) in which Huck is a runaway. He lives in an old barrel free of all obligations and is generally a happy boy. As Tom Sawyer progresses the boys help find a band of highwaymen, get them arrested and punished, and become rich in the process. Huck gets himself adopted by the Widow Douglas and this is where we encounter him in the beginning of Huckleberry Finn. Although he has been given everything the society deemed appropriate at the time (i.e. a family, a home etc.) Huck finds himself uncomfortable in his new clothing, unable to conform to strict house rules enforced upon him by the widow ("...The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had

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Approximate Word count = 1072
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)