[Saba Chaudhry]

1) What do you know about Salem, Massachusetts? (You may Google it.)

I know that Salem, is famous for its Salem Witch Trials, where they arrested and burned women at the stake for witchcraft. I believe this started with a girl named Abigail who was playing with a mirror, and other were were tried and executed for alleged witchcraft.

2) What did you find unusual about the characters’ names?

Young Goodman Brown seems as if it is out of a storybook, it does not sound practical as it does old fashioned. Faith is to have a positive connotation, but this story seems dreary. the rest of the names sound very imaginative.

3) Can you think of any stories you have read or seen wherein the characters’ names seemed so appropriate and even symbolic? (We are not talking about nicknames, wrestlers, rappers, or superheroes, and super villains.)

Aurora from sleeping beauty always seemed to me to be beautiful. It is beautiful, and light just as a sleeping beauty would be. Usually it is the fairy tales where their names are symbolic; another example would be Snow White.

4) What object is associated with his wife’s appearance? We see it more than once. What does it symbolize about her?

A pink ribbon. It can portray her innocence and her youth.

5) Approximately what age would you estimate Goodman and his wife to be? They are recently married, but back then people married very young. (The general life span was much less than today, people did not go to college, and it was considered highly immoral to have sex before marriage – hence young people got married.)

I believe they are 17 or 18. I think the average age people got married back then was about 17 years old, and they are newly married.

6) Why does this newlywed young man leave his nervous wife on this particular night? Where was he going and why?

Goodman Brown leaves his wife to go into the Forrest. He is there to face the “devil” to stop the corruption people had been listening to his evil ways.

7) At what point did you begin to sense that something odd was happening where he was walking?

I sensed something was wrong when the minister said “there is a godly young woman….” it instantly made me think of Faith, because of she was portrayed by Goodman Brown. I

8) Mention a few other highly unusual things he saw? (If you ever went camping in the woods, you realize it is very dark and not a place to be walking around.)

There was a woman standing there all alone, these people knew their way around the woods so easily. I also found it unusual that Goodman Brown had seen faith there even though Goodman Brown left after Faith did. It is also unusual that like Goodman Brown someone would walk into the Forrest looking for an Evil.

9) Eventually, he gets to his destination. What exactly is happening there?

He sees people he knows such as an old pious woman, faith , the minister of the church, and a bunch of other people at the Devil ceremony.

10) When he sees that “wife object” how does he react?

He cries out, thinking that his Faith is gone, and becomes hysterical by laughing.

11) At one point he cries out, “My Faith is gone!” What is the double meaning of this?

Faith is the one person he expected to stay true to god, She was an inspiration to him. he lost Faith in his religion as well as his wife, whose name is respectively , Faith.

12) Who has been narrating this ? (Hawthorn is the author, of course, but is the author omniscient or a character, or some other combination? Why then does the narrator ask if all this story was a dream?

The narrator is a third person point of view, but we only know in detail about Goodman Brown. Goodman Brown himself questions if it was a dream.

13) Does it matter to you if the story has been a dream or not? Can you think of any stories wherein a terrific plot or sequence turned out to be just a dream? Were you disappointed or exhilarated by finding out it was a dream?

I think it doesn’t matter if it was a dream or not, because either way it has affected Goodman Brown’s life. He trusts no one or nothing, and that is his great demise. II think of Twilight the last movie, where the main character’s sister has the power of the future, and she showcases a final battle between her family and the villains, and it doesn’t turn out well for the Villains. There are some deaths on the good side, so when it was revealed that it was just a vision i was excited and amazed at the plot twist.

14) Look at what happens to Goodman and the rest of his life. Have you ever been influenced by a dream to take some action? Or do you quickly forget your dreams? Are you yourself disappointed or relieved when you wake up from a dream?

I don’t pay too much attention to my dreams, they have never influenced my life in any way, except maybe if it was about a crush. I am able to differentiate my life, and don’t deep further into dreams if i don’t need to.

15) The author seems to pessimistic about people: they are essentially bad, even if they try to act good. How do you feel about that? Do you feel people are basically good or bad – and why?

I don’t think you can describe people as good or bad. Everyone has the potential to be good as well as they do bad. Life can’t be one way or the other, it holds many possibilities that can affect people and their lives.

[Nay]

“Salvation”

1.The story is Langston Hughes’s whom he is also the author of.
2. Langston is 12 years old in his narrative .
3. Yes I have a similar experience in a house of worship. On many different occasions people at my church were given the opportunity to get baptized and give their life to the lord. Getting baptized meant that you were giving your life to Jesus and be forgiven for sins that you have committed in the past. With this being a big deal, people were given powerful sermons, prayers, and gospel music.
4.On this particular day in Langston’s church there was a big sermon in which children were given the opportunity to meet Jesus and let him be apart of their life.
5.The boy says that he sees Jesus because he felt embarrassed for sitting at the bench for so long waiting to be saved especially since all the other kids were saved by Jesus and had gone to the altar .
6. Once in 7th grade I was pressured by my two classmates into skipping school to go to Atlantic Mall.
7. The way I would define peer pressure is being influenced by your friends or people around you into taking a specific action, engaging in a specific behavior or having a specific attitude.
8. No peer pressure is not always a bad thing. You can be pressured into doing positive things such as being more engaged in school, having a healthier lifestyle, and trying new things out of your comfort zone.
9. The difference between connotation and denotation is that denotation is the exact meaning of a word. For example, the word cold detonates a low temperature. While connotation is a feeling or an idea that is recommended by a word even though it may have no actual meaning to the word. Foe example the word cold can be used to describe being rude or mean. Someone may say to you “what you did was cold” this doesn’t mean that you did something that was actually low in temperature but instead was saying the action that you took was harsh.
Yes I remember seeing a particular visual of the minister asking Langston to come forward and the whole church cheering him on as he did.
10.The boy’s actual mistake regarding what his aunt told was him about lying about being saved by Jesus and seeing him especially since he didn’t know what the actual meaning of meeting Jesus meant.
11. I don’t think a person as young as him can actually make such a decision in having faith due to him not fully understanding or having full knowledge of what religion really is but rather having judgement based on what he has seen or taught by his relatives.

[Nay]

“Young Goodman Brown”

1. I know that Salem, Massachusetts is located in Essex County, Massachusetts and is mostly known for witch craft trails. In 1692 more than a dozen of people were accused and punished for practicing witchcraft.
2. What I found unusual about the character’s names is that they were named to be who they are portrayed in the story. For example the main character’s name is “Goodman” and in the story he is portrayed as a man who takes his reputation as a holy man very serious. Another example is the old woman Goody Cloyse was first portrayed as a religious lady who taught religion to young children.
3. No I cannot think of any stories that I have read or seen where the characters name were symbolic.
4. The pink ribbon is associated with Goodman’s Wife’s appearance. The pink ribbon symbolizes her innocence and youth.
5. I think Goodman and his wife are in their late teens between the ages of 16-19.
6. The newlywed young man left his nervous wife to go on a journey in the woods to meet up with an elderly traveler.
7. I began to sense that something odd was happening when the travelers staff was shaped like a black snake.
8.Other unusual things he saw that night was hearing unusual voices and mistaken one of the voices to be his wife’s.
9. Goodman sees that individuals his community are participating in devilish acts and going on to the evil side.
10. Goodman does not react well but in fact is very upset and began to question his wife’s innocence after he sees her pink ribbon.
11. The double meaning is that his wife is no longer the innocent pure woman that she originally was but now has transformed into a new evil person.
12. The characters were narrating throughout the story. But the author was both a character and omniscient in the story. The narrator ask if this story was a dream because of all the unrealistic things that occurred.
13. Yes it matters to me if a story was a dream or not based on the plot of the story or the lesson being taught . No I cannot think of any stories where a terrific plot turned out just to be a dream.
14. No I have not been influenced by a dream as a they are sometimes very unrealistic and are not likely to occur in real life which makes me relived when I wake up from a dream.
15. I disagree with the author’s impression about people as not everyone are bad but are sometimes pure based on who they are as an individual. I feel as if people’s character on whether they are good or bad are base on how they were raised and the values taught to them.

[Valentina]

“Young Goodman Brown”

1) I know that Salem, Massachusetts is the place where the Salem witch trials took place. A lot of people were accused of witchcraft, and some were hanged for it.

2) What I found unusual about the character’s names is that it’s Goodman, and his wife Faith. I guess you could say it’s about a “good man” and his “faith”

3) Sadly, I can not think of any stories where the character’s name was appropriate or symbolic. I know there is probably a couple I have read but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

4) What we see most about Goodman’s wife is the pink ribbons she’s always wearing. We see them when Goodman left, when he was walking in the forest towards the ceremony, and when he returned to Salem from his trip. I believe this may symbolize innocence.

5) I believe young Goodman and his wife might be around their mid or late teenage years. There is something about the way they interacted in the beginning that made me think that they are very young.

6) The reason this man leaves his nervous wife that night is to go run an errand. He does not specify to his wife where he is going, but he tells her he must make this journey tonight, and that he will be back the next day.

7) I began to sense something odd was happening as soon as he departed from Faith. He says, “Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight.” As soon as he said those words, I knew he was up to no good. When he was walking, I noticed something odd was happening when he described the serpent staff as if it was almost living, and then again when they bumped into the old woman, and she accused the man Goodman was with of being the devil.

8) Some other highly unusual things he saw were the Serpent staff that looked almost alive (which I mentioned earlier), when he took a wet branch as a walking stick, and when he removed the leaves he described them turning dried up and withered as if they had received a week’s sunshine. At one point after he believed to have heard faith’s voice, he also heard as if the forest was alive, hearing creaking, howling, and Indians yelling.

9) When Goodman arrives at his destination, he sees that there is a sort of satanic ritual going on that is being called “The communion of your race”. There were a lot of people he recognized from town, and even people from the church. He even saw that his wife Faith was part of the ritual. He tried to warn her to resist the wicked one, and look up to
Heaven.

10) When Goodman Brown cries out that his “Faith is gone”, he means that both his wife Faith AND his faith for God and his beliefs are gone too.

11) I don’t think anybody in the story is narrating it, it’s an omniscient 3rd point of view story. I think the reason why the narrator decides to ask if it was all a dream is to leave us in a sort of cliffhanger. We will never know what truly happened, so it’s up to us to make an assumption based on how the story went.

12) Honestly, I don’t mind whether the story was a dream or not. I like the way the author ended the story because it gives us a choice to decide what really happened. Although, it would have been really interesting if what happened in the woods was real. A story I can think of where the plot turned out to be just a dream is the last movie of the twilight series. The entire fighting scene turned out to be just a vision.

13) I always found my dreams to be very vivid, so I don’t forget about them easily. If I have a dream that is extremely vivid, crazy, or important, I write it down on my notes so I don’t forget about it. I’ve also had lucid dreams where I realize I am dreaming, and then I become the creator of my own dream. Even though it doesn’t happen very often, I think it’s one of the most exciting dreams I have because I’ve made myself fly or just make things appear out of nowhere. I’ve also had sleep paralysis only ONCE in my life. It’s really weird and hard to describe. But I wasn’t scared, I knew it was sleep paralysis so I found the experience really interesting.

14) I think people have the choice to be both good and bad, but they usually might incline towards being bad. I don’t think all of them do it on purpose though, some can have good intentions but they might do something that hurts others and they just don’t realize it so they keep doing it. It’s like they don’t know the real consequence behind their actions just because they are not the ones being hurt.

[alhasen]

Discussion post for the story “Girl”

The characters are the mother and the daughter. The narrator is the mother. The girl is probably in her teenage years. The mother is doing most of the talking/ordering. The other person/girl replied to her mother’s instruction quite a bit. I believe the writer uses semicolons to separate the list of instructions the mother is providing to her daughter. The story is about how the mother wants to teach her daughter not to be a disappointment to her family. She wants to teach her to be ladylike. As a boy in an arabic/muslim family my parents taught me lots of things. Some of the advice the mother is giving to her daughter is relatable like “how to behave in the presence of men”. My parents taught me to always greet guests in a respectful way and to serve them food. Yes, because when I read that part the first thing that came to mind is how relatable it is. Whenever I question my parents I will always get a reply somewhat like that.

Discussion about “Salvation”

This is Langston Hughes’s story. Langston is twelve years old in his narrative. In islam, our place of worship is a mosque the time I go there is during our Friday prayer. I believe “religious salvation” is happening on that day. I believe he doesn’t want to disappoint the people in the church so he lied. When I was 15 years old I was hanging out with my friend and his friends. We went to the park to play soccer. One hour later we went out to their secret spot to sit, that’s when my friend took out a pack of cigarettes he gave to everybody then he offered to me I was going to decline but then they began to pressure me to smoke with them. Peers are the people you spend time with and can be your classmates and your friends. Peer pressure is when the people you hang out with try to encourage you to do something. Peer pressure can be both good and bad because you can be peer pressure to help you do your tasks or you can be peer pressure to using harmful substances. Connotation refers to the good and bad association. Whereas denotation refers to the actual definition of a word. Langston’s mistake is he thought he was going to see Jesus. Yes, because everyone whether old or young is entitled to his belief. He will grow up and still doesn’t believe in god.

Discussion post for “Young Goodman Brown”

There was a witch trial that occurred between 1692 and 1693. People were being accused of practicing witchcraft. 20 people were accused. The character’s name shows who they are, like Goodman Brown and Faith. I can’t think of any name that seemed appropriate or even symbolic. The object that is associated with his wife’s appearance is the “pink ribbons”. It symbolizes her adolescence. I believe they are 16-19 years old. Goodman Brown was going to meet up with an elder traveler at the forest. When the elder traveler “plucked a branch of maple to serve as a walking stick.” and it began to “withered and dried”. He began to hear many voices. He also hears his wife’s familiar voice. He cried out “my faith is gone”. The double meaning is his wife is gone or his actual faith in himself is gone. The charters have been narrating this story because everything seems like “first person.” I have many dreams of building my own personal computer but I haven’t taken action yet. I don’t forget my dream. I feel that the author seems unreasonable. Many people make 1 bad deed and it takes many good deeds just to redeem themselves. I feel people are people, their actions are what makes them good and bad.

[Walter Guaman JR]

“Girl”

1. The Girl which is the daughter and also the mother.
2. The narrator seems to be the mother by the way she speaks and because of her mannerisms and the wisdom she has
3. In the short story the Girl is a teenager, and the way that she’s going astray causes her mom to come in to try and give her advice and teach her how to be more mature and have her best intentions at heart.
4. The mother is doing most of the talking because she is trying to give her daughter advice, trying to make her understand why certain things that she is doing isn’t going to benefit her.
5. I know when the other person is talking by the way she speaks and also how the other changes the font to italics when the girl is speaking. When the mother is speaking you can sense that the way the mother speaks she has more experience with what’s happening in the girls life more than the girl herself.
6. The semicolon is used to indicate that the mother doesn’t want to stop talking and that she doesn’t want her daughter to share her opinions, also it shows that there is a sense of immediacy when she talks because she’s trying to get all this information and advice across to her daughter.
7. The story is about a girl being raised in a very stern household. Throughout the story the mother raises her so that she can better fit in and have some self respect when it comes to herself and to also be able to do very customary things in her everyday life as a young girl.
8. I relate to the “Girl” because at a very young age and even now sometimes I’m still getting advice from my parents and they try to guide me so that I don’t go . They show me very simple tasks that I should know so that I can fit in to society.
9. The irony of the baker part of the story is that the mother literally just finished talking to her daughter and in her head she thought the daughter was listening to her but the daughter still questions the mother. Since she is still young she may not understand what her mother is trying to convey.