Excerpt from Term Newspaper:
Goodman Brown/Lottery
Literature is frequently employed as a gadget for social and political commentary. This is actually true in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown, inches and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery. inch Both these testimonies darkly satirize the rigid social conferences that define little town American life. Though they wrote about a 100 years apart, Hawthorne and Knutson drew related conclusions regarding American religious life and culture. Throughout his career, Nathaniel Hawthorne remained concerned about the hypocritical nature of puritanism. Reports like “Young Goodman Brown” darkly satirize religious fundamentalism and mob mentality. “Young Goodman Brown” is about a man who thinks he might possess dreamed of a strange pagan practice set deep in the woods. Even his wife, ironically named Faith, attends the ritual. Faith’s presumed hope in Christianity is verified false by her going to a Satanic rite in the woods. Seeing the routine shocks Goodman Brown virtually to fatality. In “The Lottery, inches a similar scenario of hypocrisy and mafia mentality can be revealed. Tessie Hutchinson sees that there are defects in the program by which the loser in the lottery can be chosen. Once she tries to draw attention to the situation, no-one will listen closely. Shirley Knutson also published “The Lottery” nearly a hundred years after Hawthorne, which shows readers how little is promoting in America. Knutson, like Hawthorne, uses a type of morbid laughter to satirize religion and small town American existence. Both Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” elucidate the theme of mob mentality in America by exposing the sinister aspect of religion.
In both “The Lottery” and “Young Goodman Brown, inch religion is definitely exposed for being no different from the pagan traditions it tries to range itself via. For example , in Jackson’s “The Lottery, inch the people of the town venerate a three-legged stool and a little dark-colored box, both these styles which have potentially pagan associations. A three-legged stool essentially represents a cauldron with three feet. Knutson even uses the term “ritual” to directly describe the strange and deadly traditions of the annual city lottery. In “Young Goodman Brown, inch even more overt pagan significance is used to convey Hawthorne’s central theme of the hypocrisy of monotheistic beliefs like Christianity. The fire established deep in the woods indicates a questionnable ritual. There is imagery of individuals flying about sticks, such as the proverbial nurses of lore. Serpent images also implies all that is un-Christian and Santanic. The ritual in “Young Goodman Brown” can be described as religious gathering like one particular at chapel; only Hawthorne turns this upside down and places that at night in the forest.
Both short reports show that folks who step away from the world meet a great untimely and unfortunate end. The protagonists in the two “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Lottery” are unsuccessful in creating alter because of the pervasiveness of reasonless beliefs. For instance , in “The Lottery, inch Tessie Hutchinson is called out for being later when showing up to the lottery ritual. Currently, she is chastised and
