Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The story begins with the homey air of a village at sunset where a recently married couple says such heartbreaking goodbye that the only destination coming to mind for the man’s journey is of some purely religious origins. See an example: “ ‘My love and my Faith,’ replied young Goodman Brown, ‘of all nights in the year this one must I tarry from thee…’ ” But as soon as they part and the man gets out of her sight, the story takes up a theme of horror and evil using words such as  “wretch”, “evil purpose”,  and describing scenes like “He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind.” , and the quoting Goodman Brown’s monologues in the forest where, for example, he says: “what if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”. At the point where he meets his companion, the pious theme of the story is evaded completely at the ambiguous line by Goodman as the reason for his delay to his companion, he says: “Faith kept me back awhile.” as if this is a journey in which ‘faith’ has nothing to do. There comes magic to be added to the theme of the story as the reader is given a snakelike description of the old man’s staff and its ability to increase Goodman’s speed. At the same time, the young man cannot trust his companion and despises of him and their destination. Here on, the remains of the man’s faith shatter into pieces when first he sees the pious old lady who even had taught him his catechism in youth walking to the same destination and later as he had receded from his intention he hears the minister and Deacon Gookin going to the same gathering as well. He wishes to fight all the devil: “With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will stand firm against the devil.” but he sees a figure resembling his wife going to the same devil gathering and that is the last straw. Here magic comes to be the major part of the theme, then come horror and evil again. And the story adds to its horror at the devil baptism. When he goes back to the village, the overshadowing theme is bewilderment and misanthropy. Although he lives a long life, it is a gloomy life that he lives.

To wrap it up, this is a story of fear and religious bewilderment which is like a vortex. As soon as one is into it, no craft can get one out of it. The only destiny is to sink in more and more; just like the Young Goodman Brown’s.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth”

The “Perrine’s-based” primary approach to thoroughly reading any poem is via asking questions among which the following four have the utmost importance; “who is the speaker?”, “what is the occasion?”, “what is the central purpose of the poem?”, and “by what means is that purpose achieved?” Thus, henceforth these questions are to be answered based on the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth.

The narrator of this poem is obviously first person singular but to who and how old this narrator might be we shall later on refer. The poem starts with a simile, claiming a similarity between the narrator and a cloud on their both being lonely and wandering over lands of nature and freedom. Here, it is to the readers’ benefit to consider the difference between alone and lonely and see why the poet decided to choose one and not the other. “Lonely”, based on Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 8^th edition, PC Version, means “unhappy because you have no friends or people to talk to” and “alone” means “without any other people”. There are two key points in the poet’s preferring lonely over alone: the first one is that naturally a cloud is a collection of inseparable tinier elements which visually are capable of forming many clouds if driven away from each other or just one if left undisturbed, so a cloud can never be a good example of being alone while it is possibly among the best similes for feeling lonely among a dozen many since a cloud is never out of society; the second point reveals the juvenile secret that the narrator tries to conceal from the audience. By calling himself lonely [l. 1] the narrator exhibits how sad and friendless he is while he pretends to be the free, happy character that has life and movement in his hands. Whereby in line 22, as he is mature and experienced both loneliness and being among friends, he calls the same situation “solitude” and is aware how ignorant he has been to the potential pleasure of years ago when he was much younger and in want of company of any nature [ll. 4, 7, 16] but mostly unsuccessful in getting into any and lonely. The poem looks like a coming-of-age narration of a man, starting at his teens and ending at his middle ages; presumably not a woman’s because beck Wordsworth’s time women could not be that free even in their imagination. The narrator is either relating to himself or some immature juvenile his life.

The narrator tells the story of how freely he wandered about valleys and hills like a lonely cloud when suddenly he notices a host of carefree daffodils by the lake under the trees, dancing and fluttering, continuous like shining and twinkling endless stars of the milky way. The daffodils surpassed the waves in the jollity of their dance and existence. He then says were he the poet that he is now by then he could not but be happy although being immature and mesmerized by the enchantments of nature back then let him gaze and only gaze vacantly at the jocund beauty. Afterwards, he tells something of his contemporary life in which he often has times of being lonely, thoughtless and mesmerized by his own memories of his pleasant passionate past resembling the dance of daffodils.

At this point the theme of the poem is still under a shady cloud itself, thus it is right to be pointed out here. The central purpose of this poem is that by age, bitter concepts of life such as loneliness change into sweet pleasant repose such as solitude.

Let the magnifier be used to further on elaborate on some of the literary devices the poet took advantage of in order for the poem to serve the purpose. [l. 4] The word “host” has been professionally used here to raise an ambiguity as whether the word refers to the number of the flowers or it refers to host in relation with guest so the daffodils as in the famous nursery rhyme and also “Daffodowndilly” by A. A. Milne are the first host of spring and its passion and joy. So there is also personification here if host is looked at as a host to the carefree nature of youth. There are many lines that benefit from imagery created by the precise description of the poet [ll. 2, 4-6, 7-13].This descriptive poem is structured in four rhymed sestets and the rhyming scheme is ABABCC, DEDEFF, GHGHII, JKJKLL.