The Twilight Zone Episode: The Howling Man

During the early 1700s, a traveler met a man in the Massachusetts forest. However, this was no mortal man, but the devil. “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Devil and Tom Walker,” two short stories, both start out in this way. Washington Irving wrote the latter in 1824, which tells how Tom Walker profited through working for the devil. In 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “Young Goodman Brown,” which describes Goodman Brown’s woodland encounter with the Devil. The two stories share specific ideas regarding the devil, overpowering minor deviations between each other.

Thesis: Goodman Brown’s state of mind between good and evil could have been caused by a combination of Puritanism obsession with the devil, its resemblance, and other prejudices such as ergot poisoning.

The man that Goodman Brown encountered on his journey symbolized the devil in the text which strongly influenced him to just about give up his faith in God. The Devil disguised as a “fellow traveler” (266) tried to influence Goodman Brown by

In “The Devil and Tom Walker,” the devil carries pious Tom away on his great black horse, and in “Young Goodman Brown,” all the village’s citizens, including Goody Cloyse, Goodman Brown, and his wife willingly gather at a worship service for the devil, which ruins the remainder of Brown’s life so that “when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave...they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.” The corruptness of man’s sinful nature made it possible for the devil to capture the souls of Tom Walker and Goodman Brown.

In Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” although the decision to visit the devil was not one Goodman Brown following the crowd, he soon realized he had not been the only one tempted to visit the devil. Actually upon his meeting the devil, he realized that he did not want to continue his journey and wanted to return back home to his wife, Faith, but soon realized many of the townspeople were companions with satan. The themes of “Young Goodman Brown” are that religion or religious actions do not make someone righteous and although we have an appeal to live right, there is a small desire to try the “dark side”. Goodman Brown knew right from wrong growing up in the Puritan community, he also had individuals who would teach him the doctrine of his religion; however just like many people, Goodman Brown had to see what it would be like to travel into the wilderness and visit the devil. While Goodman Brown was on his way he begin to hear familiar voices and see familiar people—those who have taught him the “right” way of living. Of course since the wilderness was no place for a saint to be Goodman Brown would hide so that the others could not view him of being in error of the Christian faith. This is how the theme religion

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” the allegory Goodman Brown, a man devoted to his faith in our Father the Lord, after making a hard decision that would follow him for the rest of his life ends up trying to make peace with the fact that he cannot take away the decision but can try to not make the matter worse. When Goodman Brown discovers the “depths of darkness” he is in he begins to have a loss of faith. The line for the story “’My Faith gone!’ cried he, after one stupefied moment. ‘There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee as this world given.’” represents the fact that it appears that Goodman Brown lost his faith. That line also shows how he wished for the devil’s worship to come and retrieve him.

     The main focus of the story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is the triumph of evil over good. A supposedly good man is tempted by evil and allows himself to be converted into a man of evil. This is much like the situation that arises in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, where two people are tempted to sin and give in thus submitting themselves to the power of the devil. In this novel, the area where the devil resides is strictly parallel to that in “Young Goodman Brown”.

The devil tries to trivialize our day to day life and make our choices seem unimportant. This can be seen in how flippantly The Patient treats his mother. The Patient makes the decision to become irritated with his mother instead of trying to witness to her. This seemingly small choice might’ve changed the course of his mothers life, but The Patient gives into the desire to avoid his mother at all costs (Lewis 6). The devil makes humanity over complicate easy decisions. He makes people put their needs over the needs of others, so that when easy choices present themselves, like witnessing to a close family member, people refuse to because it’s an inconvenience to them (O’Flaherty

As people grow up, it is made apparent to them that the Devil is an evil and rather a clever person. The greatest example of the devil in action is when the devil tempts Jesus. As most know, the devil fails to get Jesus to do evil. Jesus is both human and divine while the main character of The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom Walker, is a “meager, miserly fellow”. Unfortunately, Tom Walker is not Jesus so the reader must focus in on Washington Irving’s The Devil and Tom Walker to see just exactly how and when the Devil won his game. Irving portrays to the reader that the devil cannot be beaten at his own game through setting, characters, and plot. As people have seen in sports, the setting of a game (where, when, weather, etc.) can have a big impact on the game. The same goes for The Devil and Tom Walker.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” and Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suit,” the protagonists experience an encounter with the Devil. The authors use features such as appearance, behavior, and dialogue to develop the characteristics of their Devils. The Devils demonstrate a common pattern of deception and manipulation to inflict suffering upon the protagonists, leading to the common theme of the two stories. In both stories, the writers explore the theme of the effects of evil on innocence.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” tells the tale of a man whose Puritan beliefs were shaken to the core because reality turned out to be much different than he was taught in catechism. Goodman Brown showed readers how much he believed in his family’s goodness when he claimed “We have been a race of honest men and good Christians… We are a people of prayer, and good works, to boot, and abide no such wickedness” (Hawthorne 247). Because of this, Brown is surprised when he comes to know that people he thought were holy were in fact advocates for the devil and sinners- especially his wife Faith. People that he held in the highest regard were nothing but the lowest of the low to him now. He becomes surly, loses all faith in humanity, and develops a bitter worldview after this revelation.

In "Young Goodman Brown" Goodman Brown is a Puritan husband who lets his individualistic impulses lead him into a personal encounter with the devil himself. Goodman Brown:  1.  According to Levy, he “is Everyman.  The bargain he has struck with Satan is the universal one . . . . Initially, he is a naive and immature young man who fails to understand the gravity of the step he has taken . . . [which is] succeeded by a presumably adult determination to resist his own evil impulses” (117).  2.  Fogle writes that he is “a naive young man who accepts both society in general and his fellow men as individuals at their own valuation, [who] is in one terrible night confronted with the vision of human evil . . . ” (15).

After meeting the devil in the woods one evening, Goodman Browns eyes are opened to the reality of the Puritan society in which he lives. Many of the people in attendance at the meeting were trustworthy, church-going individuals who turn out to be devil worshipers and witches. Upon finding out this information, Goodman Brown finds himself seeing the citizens of Salem, including his wife Faith in a different light.

Furthermore, the narrator appears invisible to others and to himself during his time as a member of the Brotherhood, an organization that appears in the novel as a euphemism to the Communist Party in real life. The narrator joins the Brotherhood in the hopes of creating an identity for himself within the organization by acquiring recognition as a prestigious black leader. He is under the assumption that the Brotherhood recognizes his ideas, his individuality, and soon becomes dedicated and loyal to their cause. However, the narrator does not discover the Brotherhood’s true intentions until after Brother Clifton’s funeral. The Brotherhood turns against the narrator for his belligerent speech at the funeral that they fear would destroy their reputation. The narrator retaliates by accusing the Brotherhood of being “the great white father” of Harlem. The “naked and old and rotten” truth comes out when the committee tells him he was hired to talk, not to think. The narrator later learns how committed the Brotherhood is to their cause with the discovery of

Both the reader and Goodman Brown begin to realize that no ordinary man can entice the strong in faith from the path of from righteousness unless he is the devil. Furthermore, the