Madness and Sanity

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses two short stories by two leading 19th century American authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. The writer points out that they each deal, although much differently, with themes of madness and sanity in two of their short stories, "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Fall of the House of Usher". The writer compares and contrasts these authors' uses of the themes of madness and/or sanity within these stories. The writer concludes that while both authors arguably explore themes of sanity and madness within these stories, they also do so much differently than one another.

From the Paper:

"In Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown", the title character, an upright young Puritan, either dreams about, daydreams about, or actually experiences (in the writer's opinion, he dreams about) going into the forest by night and taking part in a devil-worshipping ceremony with his fellow Puritans, including many of the most religious ones in Puritan Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne's main character Young Goodman Brown is a sane and, if anything, repressed young man (like all Puritans), and his dream is actually, therefore, an unconscious "letting go" of his troubled psyche into areas he cannot allow it, consciously, to explore while he is awake. Therefore, when Young Goodman Brown wakes up again, he is now troubled by intrusive waking thoughts left over from the dream, which, having now emerged into his conscious psyche, Young Goodman Brown cannot merely push down into the unconscious again."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." The Norton Anthology of American Literature 1820-1865. Volume B. (Pkg. 1). Nina Baym et al. (Eds). New York: Norton, 2003. 1263-1272.
• Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Fall of the House of Usher" [Full online text]. Qrisse's Edgar Allan Poe Pages. Retrieved March 23, 2006, from: <http: www. poedecoder.com/Qrisse/works/usher.php.html>.

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