The exclamation of “my Faith is gone!” by Young Goodman Brown (YGB) in the midst of his experience in the forest epitomizes YGB’s transformation from a young, naïve, and prideful man to a callous and jaded man (9). He is prideful in that he agrees to meet with the devil in the forest, knowing full well that he would be tempted. YGB clings to Heaven and his wife as he declares he will “stand firm against the devil” (8). But why encounter the devil to begin with? Why would he tempt himself in this way?
These questions stand out in the readers mind as YGB seems to have ensnared himself. For it appears that he has witnessed some evil witchcraft in the forest, but it is his conscious decision to judge his fellow townspeople (despite the ambiguity of whether he was dreaming or not about what the devil was showing him). Does this mean that YGB is actually the only one who falls victim to the devil’s coercion? YGB wholly believes in the experience that he has in the forest. His faith shifts from the foundation of his wife to the singular experience in the forest, and he remains committed to this new faith in the hypocrisy of people until his death.
So, was YGB’s choice to enter the forest what led him to his undoing or was his decision to accept what he saw (whether it was a dream or not) what led to his undoing?
“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie
In contrast to YGB, Jackson Jackson (JJ) is not on a quest of self-destruction as much as healing. Although JJ is self-destructive in his own right, he is not as pervious to the destruction of his will as YGB. JJ is homeless, broke, and constantly drunk; but he hangs onto hope and chance for healing through his grandmother’s powwow regalia. At the end of the story, he does not see the evil in people as YGB does; instead, JJ as the narrator exclaims to the reader, “Do you know how many good men live in this world? Too many to count!” (458). As JJ dances in the street, he experiences a sense of healing with his past, present, and future.
Of course, the reader is not to assume that JJ is to be completely healed. After all, JJ narrates in a guarded confessional of a Native American—wanting to tell his story, but aware of the wounds caused by revealing too much to “white folks.” This leads the reader to wonder if he or she as the audience is supposed to be a white audience that is aware of its part in the white manifest destiny that decimated the life and traditions of the Native American. (One might wonder if Alexie was very aware of his audience as this story was originally published in The New Yorker). Yet, JJ takes his rough life in stride. When Officer Williams picks JJ up, the police officer states, “You Indians. How the hell do you laugh so much?” (451). The reader might wonder the same thing: how does JJ seem so content in his meager life?
The reader might also wonder why JJ keeps spending the money that gets. When he wins $100 from a lottery ticket, JJ’s first inclination is to give it away. Why doesn’t he save his money? Perhaps, his accumulation of money for the regalia is not JJ’s main purpose. JJ is taking a hero’s journey through present characters and past events to find the meaning in the regalia itself. The fact that he “won” the regalia for simply going on his journey seems to diminish the importance of the fund raising plot device in comparison to what JJ gets from the journey itself.
“The world is too much with us” by William Wordsworth
This poem paints a picture of human incompatibility with its natural environment. In this way, the poem might be an environmentalist anthem or a call for religious reform. For there seems to be an inherent assumption the modern religion does not respect the Nature of the world as much as more ancient religion (i.e. Greek mythology). In ancient religion, the gods were part of Nature; in modern religion, people are “out of tune” with nature (line 8). Wordsworth sentiments in this poem are attuned to the romantic notions of spirituality in nature and truth embedded in past practices.
“Plus Shipping” by Bob Hicok
It is hard to gauge whether Hicok’s central tone for the poem is either cynical, angry, defeated, or all three. For, Hicok imagines the conception and audience for Golfer-Pelli as one that converted the sacred into the useless commodity without any regret. This is not even a conversion from the sacred to the profane as much as an acknowledgement that a consumer can recognize beauty that exists in an object or icon and then honor it by making it a part of commercialism on their mantle:
For as we eat and sleep there’s someone
flipping through a magazine, strolling the open veins
of ruins, touching forgotten texts, sculpted faces
of a people centuries gone, who can’t help but think
there’s beauty and sorrow and money in every one of these. (lines 40-41)
Hicok highlights the perceptions that consumers have that change the meaning of the object or icon.
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