English Short Story Midterm Exam

Ayah Mousa Khalifeh

Student# 1420124

Young Goodman Brown

Evil is the opposite of Good. It exists like other opposites in the world, to demonstrate

contrast, human mankind work all their lives to enrich their good traits or their bad

traits, which ultimately leads them to their path. The nature of it is not truly

understood yet, it may rise by instinct or primitiveness, means born with it or it might

be acquired by the environment around us.

1- Here in, you've mentioned a statement that evil is the lack of love, I do not

believe so, as humans can perform evil actions in the name of love, or

from the root of love.

In the story, the behaviors that may indicate lack of love, is leaving Faith

behind despite her urging him not to go on that specific journey.

Additionally, when he woke up from the presumed dream/returned from

the forest devil ceremony, he assumed that Faith was already evil, and

decided to act coldly to her for the rest of their lives together, and he

basically doesn't love her fully anymore after this incident.

2- Despite their knowledge of the existence of evil and corruptibility in the

forest, they attended the ceremony.

 3- The very fact that Goodman Brown believed that he had good faith and

still went to the devil's ceremony despite having an idea of what will

happen there indicates that sin exists even in the hearts of the most faithful

humans.

4- No. His guilty actions that led him to lose his faith were clearly identified

in the storyline.

5- I believe it's Goodman's Brown, his belief was easy to shake, shown in

actions opposite to love.

2) Goodman Brown is a combination of both victim and responsibility. A victim as he

has fallen to the temptations of the evil which has masked truths for him, and pushed

him into losing his faith. Responsible because he continued with his journey to meet

the old man/devil in the forest for an evil deed.

3) Young Goodman Brown does not seem to recognize other people's inner identities.

It brings us to ask the question is life terminally dark, and only has evil identities that

cannot be dealt with what so ever? So many questions that we embark on when we

tend to analyze Evil/Good. Sometimes we may think that we know the definite

answer, and we are confident that that we are correct in our opinions and perception

of others. But it's not as simple as it may seem. Evil might be instinct based, it might

be acquired. There are several characteristics that we might be born with, and other

traits simply gained by traumatic or tragic experiences. We cannot lie and say that life

is rainbows and butterflies, Life can be messy, ugly, dark, and evil…it reaches the

point that it's sometimes hard to deal with. But, the ultimate fact that we cannot

bypass or ignore, and which does not hold two possibilities that whatever we went

through, whatever we faced, whatever we sacrificed, and even with the worst life

experiences, we have to cope with this world wisely and gracefully, with our against
our will, we should accept it and deal with it, for this is how we progress in life.

Hence, the villagers' involvement in evil cannot sum up all that they are. The human

soul is an interchanging state between evil and good, depending on many internal and

external factors. Instead of Goodman Brown cutting ties with his community and

family and becoming isolated, he could have learnt from the experience, even if it was

a hard one. He should’ve took into consideration his loved wife faith worrying about

him going through this journey and instead of letting this experience which was much

less more time than the time he had spent with his wife, so instead of breaking her

heart at the end when she kissed him and he just walked away leaving her with no

closure, he should’ve hold on to her, to the one good person in his life that made him

believe that there is good in life and not just evil. He should have considered it as an

eye opening situation about the complexities of the human nature and soul. He should

have summed up all the knowledge that he has learnt and concentrated it in a form

that allows him to become a better human being, a preacher…a positive contributor to

the society.

In a quote by Maria Weston Champan "we may draw out of evil; we must not do evil,

that good may come. And another one by Alexzander Solzhenitsyn "The battle line

between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.", I believe that Goodman

brown, should have loved God more deeply, and kept his faith more fiercely, and

loved Faith with the understanding that as humans we are sinners and we are saints.

That is how we are, that’s how we are made, this way he would have taken a different

path…

And for the last point that I wanted to talk about is the evil in Bisclavret Marie De

Frances, comparing Bisclavret's action toward evil and good man brown. Bisclavret

was a Nobel man loved by all of his town , married to women that he loves and trust,
this man had a secret that made his wife suspicious urging her husband to tell her

what was going on; and he did. After she knew this big secret that made her disgusted

by her husband and made her want to withdraw apart from him however his character

has never change regardless. Her evil action to go and tell her lover to steal his clothes

were he had hidden so that he can never go back to be a normal human being and

remain a wolf; and that she marries her lover. Years after seeing the man who had

married his wife he attacked him, not to mention that he saw his wife also and

attacked her too, tearing her noes off. He was extremely angry. However he still saw

the good in the rest of the people such as the king and the man who pointed out his

story saying that this was Bisclavret. Not unlike good man browns action of isolating

himself, and thinking that there is no good anymore and in nobody even his own

loving wife. Bisclavret decided to face and take action towards his wife and lover

evilness. And here I came to the conclusion that human reaction to evil varies from

one human to another.