Hawthorne and Halloween

In honor of All Hallow's Eve, I thought it appropriate to post one of my favorite short stories, "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  While Edgar Allen Poe is typified as the author of everything macabre and spooky (I used to love reading his poems on Halloween), Hawthorne also explores the hidden darkness in human nature in this chilling tale.  In the story, a young puritan travels away from home on a dreary night to make a deal with the devil himself.  Hiding his wicked plans from his lovely wife, Faith, and the good townspeople of Salem, he embarks into the woods leaving all he knows behind.  After meeting a traveller on the road who we can only surmise is Satan, Brown soon learns that all the people in Salem and the surrounding region, including Goody Cloyse, his aged catechism teacher, have all previously made a pact with Satan and are gathering that night to initiate he and his wife into their cult.  Learning that his wife is being born along on the very same evil errand as himself if more than enough to raise Brown from his stupor.  The intent of Goodman's journey becomes one of salvation rather than damnation as he tears through the woods at a superhuman pace to rescue his wife from destruction.  Just as all seems lost, Brown comes to consciousness the next day in the middle of the forest, not knowing whether his fantastic quest was a horrible nightmare or an actual event.  Unable to discern whether his adventure in the woods was real or not, Brown's faith in his wife and fellow townspeople is all but lost at the mere notion that they are all complicit in the work of the evil one.  Brown's disillusionment with his fellow man, consequent loss of faith (and Faith, you can think more about that), and resulting bitterness are a worthwhile study by anyone who wishes to challenge their faith and thinking in a creative way on the 31st of October.  Below is a link to the story.

"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happy Halloween and happy reading.    

A Brief Introduction

Welcome, friends.

I have toyed with the idea of starting this blog for some time now, so I am excited to begin.  

The purpose of this interweb exercise is essentially two-fold.  Firstly, I want to get back into the habit of writing, which is something I have been away from since college (way back in December of '09).  Writing, or writing well*, brings me a considerable amount of joy, and I sincerely wish to find my way back to consistently jotting down many of my ideas, thoughts, stories, poems, etc., etc.   The transition from thought to written word is a great challenge, so, for myself, a certain sense of accomplishment and wonder accompany everything I write.  Because of this, I have hopes that others will find as much enjoyment reading this blog as I do in writing it.

Which, I suppose, brings me sort of clumsily and haphazardly to the second purpose of my blog - to inform.  Now, I am not so presumptuous to presume that I will be informing anyone of things that they do not already know (or I might, I just don't want to be presumptuous).  I am all too aware of the shortcomings I have as a thinker and a writer.  However, I sincerely feel that I have recently come across a few items, namely articles and essays, that may be of some use to any and all who choose to read over my posts.  To clarify, I want to inform others of what I have recently been informed of myself.  I wish to stimulate deep thinking and challenge presuppositions not only in my own life, but in the lives of others.  I have a great feeling that myself and those people around me think wrongly about things more often than they think rightly.  And I want to fight against wrong thinking in a bad way.

Anyway, as the title suggests, this is brief.  More to come soon.     

*As a disclaimer, those things which I believe to be written well may or may not be written well.  While I have been out of the habit of writing for nearly a year, the habit of bad grammar and making up words never goes away.