Literature of Wilderness

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that wilderness was a symbolic state used by Nathaniel Hawthorne in "Young Goodman Brown" and F. Scott Fitzgerald in "Great Gatsby" to show their protagonists' realizations that they have lost their meaning in their respective lives. The author points out that, in "Young Goodman Brown", Hawthorne used the wilderness as the setting for Goodman's path towards discovering and testing his faith in God by describing wilderness as a place where disorder prevails against civilization's mannered characteristic. The paper relates that Fitzgerald's portrayal of the wilderness in "Great Gatsby" shows the harshness of society towards individuals who deviate from its standards of conformity in terms of beliefs and values in life, a setting far less rustic and disorderly as Hawthorne's wilderness in "Young Goodman Brown".

From the Paper:

"Even towards the end of the story, Hawthorne continued to haunt his readers with the theme of wilderness inherent in the hearts and minds of humanity. Posing the question, "Had Goodman Brown fell asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?," Hawthorne was actually creating disorder in the minds of his readers, making them also question whether Goodman's confrontation in the wilderness was an illusion or not. This unanswered question unsettled the ending of the story, leaving Hawthorne's readers groping in the "wilderness" of interpretation, just as Goodman had been lost in the wilderness of his heart and mind."

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