Jewels Castillo

Professor Scanlan

ENG 2001: Intro to Fiction

October 18, 2021

Gothic Short Stories Essay

Have you ever felt like you were in a trance, but when you aroused and realized it was a figment of your imagination. Both characters in Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne  and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, had experienced this in their stories. They both have summaries within each other because they both felt something that they experienced was reality, but wasn’t. Why were the characters going through this trance? Both texts symbolizes a change; crossing from one place to another place literally or metaphorically and making a change or going through a journey from life and death.

Young Goodman Brown 

  • Character: Young Goodman Brown
  • Setting: In the woods. The era of the Salem Witch trials??? Beg?? Middle?? End??
  • Woods- Symbolic symbol? Nature?? Are the woods evil? the darkness of the woods, makes people scared, are the woods evil or are those who travel to the woods are evil and do evil things and leave an energy print of evil.
  • The man meeting with brown is he the devil, is he an illusion, is the Brown’s subconscious? Brown is seeing what his town and/or people for they are?
  • Faith (wife)- Him being in the woods and thinking of his wife’s faith and trying to hang on to god with his faith. The irony that is wife’s name is faith 
  • Brown in the woods, the man may be teaching him that the woods shouldn’t be feared but those in the town should. People are not who or what they seem to be. Religion and society are a mask to cover the evil that is being done. 

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

  • Character:Peyton Farquhar 
  • Setting: Samle 
  • Bridge: symbolizes from crossing from one place to the other 
  • Rivers flow: Is the river symbolic of guiding him to his wife?
  • During the process of him getting hanged, maybe him having the thoughts of going home and visiting his wife made him comfort and he image that happening.

Summaries

  • Their views of reality were altered due to a traumatic events. 
  • Stories are told after death
  • Both are told her the third point of view by the character Young Brown and Peyton Farquhar.

Works Cited

Bierce, Ambrose. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION, 1988.