Young Goodman Brown...

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a very intersting story. I found it to be very suspensful and it kept my interest going. Unlike the Scarlet Letter in which I found myslef a little bored at times. Even though both stories use the same language; Old English it flowed alot more easier for me than Scarlet Letter.

As I read the story I wanted to see what was going to happen to YGB. I couldn't put the story down. At times I had to look up some of the dialogue but all in all I enjoyed reading it. I felt like I was lost in the Woods with him when he was hearing all the voices laughing and taunting him closer and closer to the communion ceremony. I knew right at the begining that the traveler waiting in the woods was the Devil luring YGB to the evil side. When they described his staff, "which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wiggle itself like a living serpent"(19).  To me the symbol of the serpent is the symbol of the devil. I found it intersting that YGB had scruples (doubt to what is right or proper) about his night journey. But the fellow traveler who carried that serpent staff slowly lures him to continue on his journey deeper into the woods.

YGB continues to find ways to second guess what he is doing and worries about his wife he leaves alone at home. His love of his Life. He is conserned on how she would feel about his choice in this journey. How it would affect her and their pure and inoccent beliefs. Maybe he was questioning who he was and how he was living. So maybe that is how temptation took over him.

A few times I had to rethink if he was truely living the moment or if it was all a dream. Your thoughts can truely play tricks on you while reading this story. I read it twice to make sure I understood what I read. Maybe just maybe I need to re think the story to truely understand what was going on in Young Goodman Browns thoughts.

Difficulty Paper #1 "Scarlet Letter"

In reading the Scarlete Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne my difficulty I am having on reading this is trying to understand the language used in it.  It is not your everyday use of language. I believe it to be Old English. So therefore I have to keep reading it over and over to try and understand exactly what the passage is saying. I find myself having to refere to my little Webster Dictionary just to get through some of the pages.  I like the story I have heard of it many years ago and know that a movie has been made from it but in reading it, it is intersting to read minus the language being used. "Pang" is not a word I ever heard before and now I know that it means "Pain"..."let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart" (39).

Sometimes I find myself getting a little bored reading the story only because I can't flow through the story like I could the Flowers. I love reading so I will get through the story but my interest is limited due to the language block.