Alexha Charles

The short stories I enjoyed reading are ‘Young Goodman Brown’ and ‘The Black Cat’. My reason for liking ‘The Black Cat’ is because it shows a story of reflection and premonition from an abusive drunken man who goes through constant rages. He harms the weak which are his wife and cats. There is one particular cat whose white patch of fur symbolizes the gallows which is the man’s fate. That moment where he was caught for killing his wife and realizing the wrongs he has done, it’s too late. The story has some sort of a dark ending but it was enjoyable to read the main protagonist be his own enemy and that his death was shown in multiple ways, by him hanging his own cat, and the second chat which had a shape of the gallows on his fur. 

In the short story ‘Young Goodman Brown’, I enjoyed this story the most because it focused on making deals with the Devil and seeing the truth of people he knows. Goodman realizes that everyone he knows has done shady deals with the Devil as well as witchcraft which sends him to a fit of fear and gloom. He doesn’t know who to trust and because he has been so close with God and telling his wife to pray and not stray from the Lord, he believes he has seen his wife at this ritual and now is distant with her. To further add my reasons for liking this story, I loved that Goodman Brown’s name reflected who he was ‘good man’. He didn’t accept any deals with the Devil and was the only one that wasn’t swayed by the Devil and by the witchcraft that all the townspeople were a part of. He stuck true to God and didn’t accept the staff given to him.