Sample 7, Young Goodman Brown

Abstract: This paper includes an analysis of Young Goodman Brown using historical, psychological, and reader-response criticism. In the Reader-response criticism, I explore how the story made me feel, what I expected next in the story line, whether my opinion is shared by any other critics, and terms associated with reader-response criticism. In the historical criticism, I explore Hawthorne’s life and how it relates (if at all) to his short story, the time period of the piece and of Hawthorne’s life, and the various terms associated with historical criticism. In psychological criticism, I delve into the psyche of Hawthorne, his protagonist, and the terms associated with psychological criticism.

Young Goodman Brown: An Analysis

            Young Goodman Brown begins at sunset, which automatically makes me anticipate a nighttime tale, and Hawthorne does not disappoint me. Knowing that this short story was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I expected it to be about early American life because I know from his other works that he usually writes about early American and Puritanical society. Again, he does not disappoint me. I found his story to be geared toward a hypocritical puritanical society, but still hold elements and thoughts which remain relevant in today’s society. Psychologically, Hawthorne explores one man’s inner struggle with faith and hypocrisy, a society’s religious hypocrisy, and perhaps his own demons. Historically, he explores an era in time which his ancestors lived through, and a time which still haunts him. Hawthorne uses terminology and symbolism within Young Goodman Brown to draw the reader’s attention to the “evil” and “lonely” errand of the night, and to point out the time period. Because of this terminology and symbolism the reader must travel this same lonely and evil road with the narrator, the protagonist, and Hawthorne. Through our journey, we too must wonder where our faith and allegiance lies – with the dark man, back at home with Faith (where it appears safe and cheerful), or straddling the middle of the road with Young Goodman Brown. Also, one must wonder is this the same struggle Hawthorne was experiencing when he wrote Young Goodman Brown. While we make our historical and psychological journey with Young Goodman Brown and Hawthorne, we must not forget that we are still merely the audience. We have our present day expectations and experiences, with which to draw our own conclusions from Young Goodman Brown.

            When I began reading Young Goodman Brown, I quickly became aware of the many symbols Hawthorne incorporated into the story. The first word which stands out to me is Goodman Brown’s wife’s name – Faith. Her name makes me anticipate a religious theme – the proverbial story of good versus evil. Faith stays at home symbolizing Brown’s journey without his spiritual faith. Hawthorne points out that Goodman Brown is young and just newly married, therefore his faith is also new. As most young Christians learn early on in their religious journey today, their faith will be tested; I assume this testing of faith also occurred in Hawthorne’s generation. Like an addict who must have one final binge before going into the rehab facility, Brown exclaims that once he does this one last “errand”, then he will “cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven” (Hawthorne).  Not only is Faith a symbol of Brown’s spiritual faith, but Fleishner (1990) finds that Faith “is both wife and faith, his connection to carnal knowledge and spiritual revelation” (p. 515). This adds a dimension to Faith I did not recognize. Brown’s “carnal knowledge” could not have been that great considering he was young and newly married.

Another symbol I noticed was Faith’s pink ribbons. Hawthorne mentions Faith’s pink ribbons three times at the very beginning of the story, and they seem to be the only colorful items within the story – except the red fire. Hawthorne paints a dark tale of discovery, but he includes these pink ribbons which leaves the reader wondering what they symbolize. The ribbons appear to be a symbol of goodness and purity, or at least what connects Brown to the goodness he leaves behind. I believe the ribbon is a symbol of goodness and purity while attached to Faith because while in the forest Brown thinks he hears his wife’s “lamentations” and then the pink ribbon floats down from the darkness. It is the only color to break up the monotony of the darkness and remind Brown of Faith waiting at home. It is not just coincidence that Young Goodman Brown starts his journey slowly when Faith is at home, continues slowly as if faith is pulling him back, but speeds up when he thinks, “My Faith is gone!...There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name” (Hawthorne). Faith/faith acts as his anchor to reality.

Where the pink ribbons connect the reader, the narrator, and Goodman Brown to good, the cane connects us to Satan and evil. The cane is one more symbol which is seen throughout the short story, reminding the reader of a biblical story of a cane which turned into a serpent. The use of the cane shows the author’s knowledge of the bible. It is carried by the dark man, who looks like an older version of Young Goodman Brown, turns into a serpent when confronted with Goody Cloyse, and gives Young Goodman Brown speed when put into his hands. The cane touches Goody Cloyse’s neck and then is seen “writhing” in the “traveller[‘s] hands”.  The staff, according to the devil, was “one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi” (Hawthorne). This particular symbol affects me by reminding me of my childhood Sunday school classes where I learned about Satan, Jesus, and men who threw down walking canes which turned into snakes.

As a reader, I expect a written work to impact me, influence me, or affect me in some way. Hawthorne writes of a time period I know nothing about, but if his characters reflect his true thoughts and emotions, then that I can relate to. I know what it is like to struggle with my faith, to feel drawn to one way of life, while another waits patiently in the wings. I have traveled down dark, spooky roads – both literally and figuratively – only to realize all is not as it seems. The thing I think I have come to realize, that Goodman Brown does not seem to have learned, is that there has always been both good and bad within the people around me. Sure, it can be frightening when you first realize it, but there comes a point in one’s life when the darkness need not drag you under its spell. There is a chance that you can be the light that shines through the darkness, instead of letting that darkness swallow you whole, like Brown did. Unlike Hawthorne, though, I do not believe “evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness” (Hawthorne). I still prescribe to the concept of one true, loving God. I cannot imagine the hopelessness Young Goodman Brown felt when he discovered it was his wife standing in front of him getting baptized into a devil worshipping cult or witches coven. Here she was – his link to goodness and faith – joining him in his wicked ways.

Then, the narrator asks the reader if Goodman Brown had dreamt the entire witches meeting? The narrator also invites the audience to pretend it was a dream, a warning to Goodman Brown. Did Goodman Brown now see evil in everyone he met where there was none? Did he lose all faith – not in his God, but in his society; like the Puritans accusing innocent women of witch craft? This affects me because I know distrust of other people. Goodman Brown’s mistrust of the people in his village reminds me of the distrust an abused child has for other people. If you take an innocent child, introduce them into an abusive situation, and then remove them from the abusive situation; their behaviors would have changed because their ability to trust has been altered. In essence, their view of the world has changed; their innocence has been lost.

From a historical aspect, Young Goodman Brown is one example of the stories

Hawthorne writes about New England society. From Young Goodman Brown to The Scarlett Letter, Hawthorne writes about Puritan society and events which became part of their history. Many of Hawthorne’s stories, including Young Goodman Brown were set in the late seventeen hundreds. Some of the events referenced in Young Goodman Brown were the Salem witch trials, King Phillips war, the fear of American Indians, and the rivalry between the Puritans and the Quakers. Hawthorne references the war and the Quakers as Brown is walking through the forest with the devil.

“I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman…and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war.” (Hawthorne,).

Many critics say that Hawthorne writes about these events because of the guilt he felt at his ancestors playing a role in the Salem witch trials. Reynolds, in his “Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne” (2001) wrote, “His interest in this history was enhanced by the roles his ancestors had played in it. His great-grandfather John Hathorne, for example, had been one of the judges in the infamous Salem witchcraft trials, and Hawthorne's treatment of the complexities of witchcraft in stories such as "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) thus combines national and familial regard.”(p. 16). Not only does his family play a part in why he writes about the Puritan and Quaker lifestyles, but some critics believe, “in the climactic scene of the "witches' sabbath," Hawthorne appeared to have been working not only from Puritan archives but also from Frances Trollope's contemporary observations on the demonic aspects of evangelical tent meetings in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)” (Keil, 1996, p. 34). In other words, just as our papers or contemporary books focus on aspects of our society such as child porn and child molestation, it was not uncommon to see common discourse on the history of the witch hunts, accounts with Indians, and reports about the war. And if there was not current discourse, there had to have been archived accounts where Hawthorne got a lot of his information, including the names of Goody Cloyse and Martha Carrier – women who had been accused of being witches and killed because of it. And since his great-grandfather was part of the witch trials, perhaps those accounts were found within the belongings of his ancestors.

Spiritually speaking, the New England witch trials were one of the first psychological intrigues of the New World. The Puritans and Quakers were the first settlers to settle in the New World because of religious prejudice in England, and their piety was immeasurable. The Puritans and Quakers were the first Americans to explore the fall of man; therefore, “Young Goodman Brown” became an allegory about just that – the fall of man. It is hard to miss Hawthorne’s opinion of the hypocrisy of religion and the witch trials, even though the witch trials occurred almost two hundred years before his time. However, with this being said, people during Hawthorne’s time still struggled with temptation, and many of the things they were tempted with were the same things the earlier Puritans and Quakers felt they were tempted with.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown” delves into the psyche of the human condition, as well as the spirituality of the soul. Askew of Duke University would have the reader believe that there is a difference between spirituality and psychology. He believed that Hawthorne’s story about the fall of man was merely psychological: “The clearest indication that the fall is psychological and human rather than theological and spiritual is furnished by "The Maypole of Merry Mount” (Askew, 1962, p. 337). And perhaps some critics would agree, but I believe one’s spirituality has much to do with the psychology of a person, thus making Hawthorne’s story both psychological and spiritual.

Lynn (2011) lists several terms which relate to the discussion of psychology: isolation, intellectualization, repression, projection, denial, displacement, and reversal (p. 202). These terms not only fit psychology, but spirituality, too. When a person feels separated from his God, does he not isolate himself? When Brown discovered the wickedness within his brethren, wife, and townspeople, did he not isolate and withdraw from them? Hawthorne writes, “But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her [Faith’s] face, and passed on without a greeting” (Hawthorne). When faced with our sinful choices, do we not intellectualize our choices and our reaction to our people’s choices? Did Goodman Brown justify his choice to walk onto the forest path? Hawthorne writes, “With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose” (Hawthorne). Did Adam and Eve also rationalize their choice to eat from the forbidden tree? Satan told them they could eat from the tree?  According to Askew (1962), Hawthorne deals with a man who stands on the threshold of loss of innocence, not only in the Adamic [sic], moral, and characterological [sic] sense explored by R. W. B. Lewis and Leslie Fiedler, but also in a specific psychological sense” (p. 335) Again, Askew assumes a separation of psychology from religious spirituality. There could not have been this kind of separation for the Puritans or Quakers, since their lives revolved around their religion thereby making their psychology and spirituality united. Hawthorne recognized this unity, as well, because Brown when faced with the loss of his faith and the knowledge of the wickedness of the townspeople becomes depressed and withdrawn, until his death, “for his dying hour was gloom” (Hawthorne).

Then, there is the question Hawthorne poses towards the end of this short story, and what critics have pondered for decades, “Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?” (Hawthorne). According to Budick (1986), Young Goodman Brown is a work of fiction; therefore Brown’s account is as real as “any allegorical experience is real” (p. 218). She also states that critics will say “yes, Brown’s witches’ Sabbath represents a pure and unadulterated “dream,” a demented projection of the protagonist’s degenerate imagination”, but other critics think it really does not matter if Brown’s account was reality or dream because “the ultimate effect on Brown is the same” (p. 218). In other words, Brown would have reacted the same way if he had experienced it as a real event, or as a dream. Crews would call this “psychological necessity” (Budick, p 218).  I agree with Crews.

We may never know if this fictional event was intended to be a figment of the character’s overwrought imagination or not, but we can guess that the author saw some hypocritical behavior in his peers – the professed Christians – and was making a statement about this hypocrisy with his short story about a young man, newly married, starting out on a journey towards the unknown, innocent of the evils of the world, and ending up walking the path with Satan and meeting people he has known his entire life. He rationalizes the journey has one he must do before settling down with his wife, but when he discovers his wife beside him being inducted into the same cult he becomes distraught, withdrawn, and unclear. Just like Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened when they bit into the forbidden fruit, Faith and Brown’s eyes are opened to the deceit, lies, and wickedness around them when they are “granted [to] know their [the townspeople] secret deeds” (Hawthorne). Hawthorne points out that at once Brown and Faith now realize the people they tried to hide their sin from were also sinners, therefore making them hypocrites. Hawthorne refers to them as a “miserable race”, which makes me assume he means all humans are hypocrites, not just his kinfolk or the Puritans and Quakers.

Hawthorne may think we are a “miserable race”, but he did not surprise me when he set Young Goodman Brown in a New England town, named it Salem, and introduced the reader to late seventeenth century America with its’ fears, hypocrisy, innocence and diplomacy which are still relevant today. The struggle Young Goodman Brown has with his faith is the same psychological and spiritual struggle Americans have today. Hawthorne may have drawn from his wealth of ancestry history and archival resources to write Young Goodman Brown, but he explores innocence and loss of innocence in a way people can still relate to today. Hawthorne’s Brown becomes a symbol to readers that ignorance of the world and the corruption in the world can bring you down. The reader must ask “Is it best to remain ignorant?” If we remain ignorant, we must never travel the lonely and dark path through the forest, and we can stay home with our still innocent new bride. On the other hand, in order to fight the darkness must we not know what we are fighting against? Hawthorne takes his readers down a complicatedly dark, historical, and psychological road to make us ask ourselves if we are living the right way. Are we merely the audience, or are we actors in our own lives?

References

Askew, M. W. (Nov., 1962). Hawthorne, the Fall, and the Psychology of Maturity. American

Literature, 34(3), pp. 335-343. Duke University Press. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2923727.

Budick, E. M. (March, 1986). The World as Specter: Hawthorne's Historical Art. PMLA, 101(2),

pp. 218-232. Modern Language Association.  Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/462405.

Fleischner, J. (Mar., 1990). Female Eroticism, Confession, and Interpretation in Nathaniel

Hawthorne. Nineteenth-Century Literature, 44(4), pp. 514-533. University of

California Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045072.

Hawthorne, N. (1835). Young Goodman Brown. Retrieved from

http://www.online-literature.com.

Keil, J. C. (Mar., 1996). Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown": Early Nineteenth-Century and

Puritan Constructions of Gender. The New England Quarterly, 69(1), pp. 33-55. The

New England Quarterly, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/366302.

Lynn, S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory (6th ed.).

Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Reynolds, Larry J. (Editor). (2001). Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

     Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ashford/Doc?id=10142243.

Sample 6, Nature vs. Technology in British Lit

Nature versus Technology in British Literature

In every time period, from the Romantic age to the present day, writers used nature scenes, natural objects, or creatures of nature to convey meaning. In the Romantic age, nature was used to describe a relationship between man and nature, and to show appreciation for God-given scenery. In the Victorian age, the Industrial Revolution caused an ever-increasing middle class, political reform, trade, print, and economic stability. Because of these changes writers began to write for the readers, who were the increasing middle class; and what the middle class was concerned with was the changes that were brought on by the Industrial Revolution and the economic growth. Victorian authors were not concerned with changing the themes of the Romantics, just expounding on it. While poets in the Romantic period wrote passionately about nature, and subtly about change; Victorian poets wrote more passionately about change, and more subtly used nature. In the Romantic period, the images of nature seemed to have been used to help the readers forget about the ever changing times and the overcrowding of an industrial England. By contrast, the Victorian authors used their writing to bring awareness to the changes, especially the negative aspect of change. The twentieth century brought another war, War World I, and an array of opinionated poetry and prose writers. Their passion was about the war, life in its aftermath, and a change towards poetry, once again. With the modern poetry came a combination of technology and nature, especially as the sciences saw an explosion in the twentieth century. No one epitomized the change from Romantic to modern, or shunned the Victorian more than Yeats. Yeats believed the Victorian poetry “corrupted” its audience, while he embraced the poetry of the Romantic, and later the poetry of modernism. (Fallis, 1976). On the other hand, Wordsworth and Blake used nature in their poetry during the Romantic time ‘in hopes of helping the readers escape the atrocities of an industrial age, to show the changes of landscape due to the industrial age, and to imply or allude to a human’s desire to enjoy and feel a oneness with the nature around them. In so doing, they were an example to the next generations, Victorian and into the modernism phase of poetry where Yeats duplicated many of the nature scenes with increased awareness to informalities and accuracy.

In the Romantic age, poets embraced imagination, nature, and the ordinary life. Within their normal lives, there was an ever present awareness of nature and nature scenes. Industry was just beginning to find a foot-hold in society, therefore people still live in rural areas where nature could be observed and enjoyed. Life was about leisure, love, and fulfillment. Poets wrote about this leisure and beauty. They incorporated imagination within their portrayals of nature, and as Wordsworth was noted to state, “feelings” (p. 11). He thought that this – feelings – was missing from the eighteenth century predecessors of his occupation. He, as well as other poets after his influence took it upon himself to correct this perceived error of former writers.

Therefore, Wordsworth used nature and very subtle comments on the industrial changes of the day. Wordsworth says this about nature:

From Nature doth emotion come, and moods

Of calmness equally are Nature’s gifts:

This is her glory; these two attributes

Are sister horns that constitute her strength.

Hence Genius, born to thrive by interchange

Of peace and excitation, finds in her

His best and purest friend, from her receives

That energy by which he seeks the truth,

From her that happy stillness of the mind.

 (Greenblatt, et al, 2006, p. 381)

 Wordsworth believed in nature bringing about a reason to write, and thought he was fixing the problems that other poets had of portraying nature in their poems (p. 11). Wordsworth was one of many poets who used “the landscape with human life, passion, and expressiveness” (p. 11) within his poetry. One poem which was used as an example of how the Romantic Wordsworth expressed the beauty of nature and how it affected the human psyche was “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (pp. 305-306), in which the narrator wanders about outside, observing nature and feeling lonely. Similes and personification help compare daffodils to a “crowd”. The daffodils twinkle and dance and have more glee than the waves. Perkins (1995) writes of Wordsworth’s use of nature versus industry:

I think of Wordsworth standing, in his famous poem, on a ridge above Tintern Abbey, looking over the valley of the Wye River. Wordsworth sees green fields and groves, mountains and sky... human beings are present in the landscape…seem part of nature or accord with it. This is Wordsworth's ideal. He describes a scene of peace and harmony…wisps of smoke curling above the trees. They also suggest the presence of human beings, and the poet guesses that the smoke comes from the fires of vagrants, or maybe of a hermit… a vagrant is only transient in nature. A hermit has fled from mankind to nature. In the vagrant and the hermit, human beings don't disturb nature's order. This relieves a fear that the green world of nature, the only paradise we can know, ceases to be a paradise as soon as there are human beings in it… the smoke Wordsworth saw came, as of course he knew, from charcoal burners in the woods? From workers who felled the trees and converted the wood into charcoal. And the wisps of smoke also came from steel mills along the Wye River, burning the charcoal to melt the ore. Industry polluted the landscape Wordsworth saw, though not the one his poem describes. He elided the charcoal burners and steel mills. (p. 71)

This relation to industrialism is not usually seen by many readers in the smoke billowing up from a fireplace or fire, but Perkins did, and it is a great reference to the nature versus industrialism argument. Some poets, such as William Blake, found Wordsworth’s poetry to be “committed to un-spiritualized observation: “Natural objects always did, and now do, weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in men” (p. 12).Yeats edited some of Blake’s work and used his poetry to influence his own “quietly precise nature imagery” (p. 2020).  

            While Blake may have criticized Wordsworth’s use of nature, he also used nature to describe love and life, and contrasts his poem of nature with images of a changing Industrial England. Although he mentions industrial and man-made objects within his poems, the theme of Industrialism would be a subtle one and would lead the Victorian poets to continue the poetics of Industrialism. Blake personifies nature in “Earth’s Answer” (p.88) and “The Ecchoing Green” (p. 82). From “Earth’s Answer”, “Earth rais’d up her head…Her light fled…her locks cover’d with grey despair.” He implies in this passage that Earth is a live, her light runs away, and she grays like a human woman. From The Ecchoing Green, “The sun does arise, / And make happy the skies…The sky-lark and thrush, / The birds of the bush sing louder around” (pp. 82-83). In these lines, Blake alludes to a happy sky which makes the birds sing much as a human would who basks in the sun’s glory. Blake also mentions Industrial objects in “The Tyger” (p. 92) and “A Divine Image” (p. 97):  from “The Tyger”, “What the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil” (p. 93), and from “A Divine Image”, “The Human Dress is forged Iron, / The Human Form, a fiery Forge, / The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d, / The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge” (p. 97). In these lines, the hammer, chain, furnace, anvil, and forging are all images of an Industrial England; one which Blake must have seen first-hand to have knowledge of such things.  While Blake comments briefly on man-made objects in a few poems, his poetry encompassed scenes of nature and love in hopes of drawing the readers attentions from the oppression of the time, if only for the moment.

One writer, Mr Bruns (1975), of the modern language Association, sought to discuss the difference between the thinking differences between the Romantic writers from the Victorian writers. Of the Romantic authors he states they were more inclined, like their predecessors to use metaphors to describe “growth and decay”, and to theorize about “recovering from a poet’s own history those strategic events” which knowledge, or experience seemed to draw from them. On the other hand, Bruns states that the Victorian writers thought they owned their history which “neither nature nor consciousness” stayed in one place, but dominated many aspects of history, such as politics and religion (p. 905).  One can only guess that he means that there was a lot of science and changes of scenery due to war depicted in the Victorian poetry and prose, but that the Romantic writers seemed to grasp a clearer picture of history, as it was depicted through their poetry. This depiction of history, through the changing profiles of the landscape, gave the modern poet and prose writers something to grab hold of, and to influence them towards a better understanding of their world.

 In the modern world of the twentieth century according to Greenblatt (2006), there was a change in the “traditional stabilities of society, religion, and culture” (p. 1828). Authors expanded on the evolving “vocabularies” of the new sciences, and technologies such as television, electricity, radio, and medicines. Greenblatt wrote, “…literature could not stand still, and modern writers sought to create new forms that could register these profound alterations in human experience” (p. 1829). This means that things were occurring so fast in England and throughout the world in the twentieth century that the writers were struggling to keep up. This is, also, much like the Romantic and Victorian ages of literature. While the Romantic authors wrote about life and experience, and Victorians wrote about change and war, so the modern authors continued to write about life, experiences, change, and war. Poetry began to change as T. E. Hulme’s “insistence on hard, clear, precise images, arose in reaction to what it saw as Romantic fuzziness and facile emotionalism in poetry” (p. 1834) began to influence the other poets of the modern age. Yeats, for example, began as a Romantic poet where he displayed “the romantic evocation of escape into dream, art, and the imagination” (p. 2020), but eventually his style evolved from purely romantic to one of a combination of “colloquial with the formal” (p. 2021). While Yeats embraced Romantic and modern styles of writing, he found Victorian poetry to be “rhetorical and argumentative, directed always away from the poet’s consciousness towards a world he imagined to be outside himself” (Fallis, 1976).

If one were to read Yeats’ poetry they would discover many of the Romantic displays of nature, and very little of the Victorian industrialism. In “The Wild Swans at Coole”, Yeats portrays scenes of nature, “The trees are in their autumn beauty, / The woodland paths are dry, / Under the October twilight the water / Mirrors a still sky; / Upon the brimming water among the stones / Are nine-and-fifty swans” (p. 2033). Like Wordsworth and Blake, Yeats personified nature to show humans connection to the natural world. On the other hand, Perkins (1995) wrote, “Yet British poetry, since the death of Yeats, inhabits another scene entirely, almost a mirror image of the now-familiar landscape of ruins. “Even in our so-called postmodern poetry, which is continually self-undermining, love of nature remains an emotion poets can still sometimes voice without irony” (p. 70).

 One can also tell the changes he made from the Romantic language to the modern language when he changed his poem “The Sorrow of Love” from 1891 in the romantic style to 1925 in the modern style. He revised the poem in an attempt to make it more accurate and informal. For instance, he changed from the “quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves / the full round moon and the star-laden sky” (p. A19), to “The brawling of the sparrows in the eaves, / The brilliant moon and all the milky sky” (p. A20). Reading carefully, one can see the more personal term of “brawling” of sparrows and the sky lit up at night. The scenery of nature becomes more personal and accurate for the reader with his change from Romantic to Modern.  

The poetry of Blake and Wordsworth epitomized Romantic poetry of their day with their portrayal of nature, and man-made objects. Victorian authors tried to imitate this infusion of nature, but centralized on the social, economic, and industrial changes of their time as the population grew. The romantic age was all about feelings and nature; and reading was a means of escape from the everyday hum-drum of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.  By the time the Victorian literary period came into full swing, all that was on the minds of the literary giants was change, and it held a prominent place within their works, and nature became a dim light. As the twentieth century got into a full swing, so did the first World War, and with it came more destruction of nature, and more growth of industry and technology. Everyone from readers to authors was concerned with the war and survival. The sciences saw a major boom, and authors incorporated this it to their work. With modernistic poetry came a revolution of the romantic ideals, except with an increase in what Yeats referred to as “colloquial and preciseness”. Poetry had not changed overly much, matter of fact it had come full circle. Nature never really disappeared from poetry as it moved into the twentieth century.  Yeats enjoyed the poetry of the Romantics, seemed to despise the Victorian period works, but evolved into a more modern form of the Romantics.

References

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature (8th ed., Vol.2).

New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Bruns, G. L. (1975, October). The formal nature of Victorian thinking. PMLA, 90(5), 904- 918.

Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/

Fallis, R. (1976). Yeats and the reinterpretation of Victorian poetry. Victorian Poetry, 14(2), 89

100. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/
Perkins, D. (Fall, 1995). Sympathy with Nature: Our Romantic Dilemma. Harvard Review, 9,

pp. 69-82. Retrieved on October 31, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27560488.

Sample 5, Science vs Religion

Science versus Religion

While many theorists and philosophers believe that science and religion are separate of each other, they are co-existent and co-dependent. In other words, there is a rivalry which has grown from science and religion’s dependence on each other to decipher the mysteries of the universe. The search for knowledge is one of the oldest professions in the world, and religion is among the oldest paths to knowledge. Science was once a part of religious studies; however as religion evolved science took a different path to discovery. An example of religion and science working together can be seen in the studies of astrology and astronomy. Today, they are known as two different branches of study, but in the past they were one and the same. In ancient Greece, Rome, and Middle East, philosophers and scientists would conduct scientific experiments and discuss philosophy in buildings which stood in the shadows of temples, and quite often their schools were sponsored by religious establishments. The movement of stars, comets, planets, and solar cycles were often part of Aztec and Mayan religious ceremonies where even an Aztec priest could predict a solar eclipse just as accurately as modern day astronomers. It was not until the European Renaissance that a true division or divorce was recognized between science and religion with the argument that the sun was the center of the solar system. The final thread in religion and science’s separation was Darwin and his philosophy of evolution.

            “In its simplest terms, the conflict is between two ways of understanding the world: evidence and logic versus unquestioned authoritative texts and faith.” (Fish, 2010, p.27). This may be the absolute truth. Science builds its “truths” around empirical evidence. Everything must be tested and proven, while religion builds its “truths” on faith. The text book (2010) states it plainly, “Science, that is, can tell us the what, but religion or spirituality often provides the profound and meaningful responses to "why?"” (Kindle 3430-3431). This shows that religion and science must work together in order to get a holistic answer to many of the universes questions.

Religious officials and followers belief in their truths based on what they read in the bible. Over the years many scientists, historians, and archaeologists have tried to use science to prove or disprove many of the stories from the bible: stories such as the beginning of the earth, humans, and animal life, the great flood, the birth of Christ, his burial place, and his resurrection. “For physicists, introducing God as a cause would interfere with or contradict their extremely powerful explanatory models that go all the way back to the Big Bang” (p. 28). On the other hand, religious leaders felt as if science was “interfering with or contradicting” their explanations of the bible stories. For religious leaders, Jesus’ miracles and miracles performed in his name were all the evidence they needed of a God and his inspired words. However, for scientist’s, tests had to be run and hypotheses had to be controlled, tested, and proven.           

            Wilson denotes a science versus religion conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church. Galileo ranks right up there with Copernicus and Martin Luther, who all challenged the beliefs and teachings of the church. Luther disagreed with the church’s belief in paying for a place in heaven. Copernicus believed that the sun was the center of the universe and that the earth was round in a time when the church preached that the earth was flat and the center of the universe. Luther’s disagreement with the church was more philosophical than scientific, but Copernicus’ beliefs were based on science and were eventually proven through scientific exploration. Interestingly enough, a religious believer, Tycho used science to try and disprove science. “ The bible presented the earth as stationary…two cannon balls shot with and against the direction of the earth’s alleged spin went approximately the same distance” (Wilson, 1999, p. 68). Galileo was one of those scientific minded individuals who set out to test Copernicus’ hypotheses.  Galileo observed the movement of the tides, and was able to watch the night sky with a telescope, where he discovered the moons of Jupiter and Earth. Many of Galileo’s findings did not find support within the Catholic Church, and definitely not within the government.

            Just as the religious believers tried to disprove scientific findings, Galileo tried to convince people of faith to “approach nature not through revelation but through observation and reason…since nature was as much God’s work as the Bible” (p. 79). The church in their response to Galileo believed Galileo elevated himself to a position of higher than God, and of knowing more than God. They stated, “Galileo wrongly asserts and declares certain equality between the human and the divine intellect in the understanding of geometrical matters” (p. 81). The church went as far as to call Galileo a fool, and the Pope was adamant about the inequality between God’s mind and man’s mind. The church also refuted Galileo’s evidence of the tides being caused by the movement of the earth (p. 81).

            Galileo’s fate was not a happy one, and he had very little support among his peers, but his hypotheses would hit a cord with many scientists over the years and divide science and religion farther apart. By the time Charles Darwin published his theories of evolution in On the Origins of Species, society was not as dependent on the word of the church. There were a lot of scientific developments and people began to question the biblical stories and philosophies of the bible they were being taught. While many people found Darwin’s theories to be crazy and outlandish and very revolutionary for his day, there were more supporters than with Galileo’s theories. Imagine a society who had been taught to belief that God had imagined and made humans, animals, and a world in which to put them. Single handedly, God had made Adam and Eve in his own image and gave them reign over everything on Earth. And then, imagine a man comes along and says it’s all a lie. He claims the humans evolved from other species and that there was evidence of “relatedness and succession among closely allied species” (Quammen, 2009 p. 4 of 7). He finds fossils and documents all his findings in order to share it with people. His findings were controversial and “have been attacked for more than 150 years, most recently by advocates for faith who argue that this world shows all the hallmarks of “intelligent design,” i.e., divine creation” (Stengel & Lacayo (eds), 2010, p. 98). One important factor to note is that Darwin does not refute the existence of God, but how God actually started his work. He believed that God’s timeline could be traced through the evidence left behind: the fossils.

            The twentieth century did not see an end to the controversy of science and religion, but an explosion Evolution, while revolutionary in its time, really did not become an issue until “the enormous growth of public high schools between 1900-1920) that exposed rural population to modern science” (Levinson, 2006, p 422).  Then there was a group known as the Creation Science Society, which began in 1963. They tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the United States Supreme Court from “overturning a state ban of evolution” (p 427). And in 1987, the “Supreme Court recognized creation science as religious doctrine, not science” (p. 427).  The creationist group’s largest religious opponent seems to be the Scientism group. They are a group who embraced a religion which “exalts the view of science and scientific inquiry to an absolutely predominant position, capable of solving, explaining, and/or passing judgment on everything” (p 427). According to the article, Scientism is science as a religion.

            Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus have all been dubbed the fathers of modern science.  They all opposed the church and various doctrines taught by the church, but as the years travel by more scientists would pick up the torch and education would expand, and faith based educations seemed to decline. According to one article (2009), “the American media exacerbate[d] the problem” (p. 17) by comparing religion and science as two fighters in a cage match. Religious “dogmatists” are in one corner and scientists in another corner. There is a group of men whom Gregory calls ‘the New Atheists”, who belittle religion and religious followers because they have no belief in religion. Gregory states, “findings of science do not demand an atheistic denial of God, but can instead be rationally interpreted in different terms consistent with a traditional Christian view of God and theology of creation” (p. 18). This echoes the belief of Darwin’s theory that God was responsible for the Earth and it’s creations, but that God’s image may not be what we belief the bible states because humans evolved from different organisms.

            One of the biggest conflicts between religion and science in the modern time is the theories of intelligent design and natural selection (evolution). The New World Encyclopedia defines intelligent design as “the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that certain features of the universe and of things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection” ( Young (ed), 2004, p 6). Obviously, the major conflict is how or when life evolved on Earth. The evolutionists believe that all life evolved by chance and only the strong survived without any grand theme or reason. This does not include Darwin since he did belief in the existence of God. The intelligent designers believe life evolved on a grand program started by an intelligent being not necessarily the God in religious texts. It has nothing in common with the creationism or natural theology. Evolutionists believe that any theory that contradicts evolution is a false theory. When the theory of genetics was first published, the evolutionist was fast to attack the theory until it could explain evolutional traits and how they could be passed on the next generation.

            Both theories complement each other. While evolution theory explains how we got here, it also explains how life on Earth changed due to the different climates around the world and throughout history. “Both YEC and ID, that is, insist that to separate religion and science does irreparable harm to our understanding of both because religion informs our scientific understanding just as our science complements our religious understanding.” (Kindle ed 3436-3438). Evolution can be explained through Mendel’s study of genetics and Darwin’s various designs of fossils, but DNA can only be explained through intelligent design. The double helix of DNA twirls around in the human body, providing information to the cells, and providing information into the offspring. The sophistication and the design have not, nor ever will be duplicated by a human being or natural selection. The powers to be within the religious world are adamant that only one entity could be responsible for the design of humans: God.

            No matter how much some people believe that religion and science must work together to encompass the entirety of universal thought and answer many of the universes questions, some theorists or philosophers such as Stephen Jay Gould believe that Science and religion are two different “magisteria”. According to the text book (2010) Gould believed:

 “if they [Science and Religion] are careful not to overstep their own boundaries, those who operate in the two magisteria can have respectful and productive conversations with each other, and each has much to learn from the other. Gould insists that scientists must recognize that many of life's most important questions cannot be answered by science alone, but he, along with many other scientists, also wants it to be recognized that religion should not attempt to address legitimate scientific claims with techniques that fall outside the magisterium of science.” (Kindle 3415-3421).

In other words, Gould recognizes that some questions require both disciplines to conclude some truths, but one discipline should not attempt to answer a question which obviously belongs to the other discipline. It is not clear by Gould’s theory which questions belong to the religious discipline or which belongs to the scientific discipline of study.

            The battle between science and religion may have begun with the Aztecs. Religion and science may examine one aspect of life, but from different ends of the spectrum. While Science relies on empirical data and proof, religion relies on faith alone.  While science seeks to answer the how or what, religion seeks to answer the why. While some of the events of the Bible can be and have been proven through DNA testing, not all miracles can be proven scientifically. Science, once a strong part of religion, became an entity on its own. Science continues to branch into sub-levels such as biology, earth science, and chemistry. On the other hand, religion has also developed changes over the years. Religion has seen separation and division among its followers with the different denominations and radical beliefs. Science was used in religion to come up with the first calendar (Aztec calendar). Science and religion have been argued by some very influential men. Whether one believes in religion and science as one, or as divorced entities, one has to admit that one could not exist without the other. Evolution still remains a vital argument between science and religion. It will be the proverbial which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did God make us and then we evolved? Or did life evolve on Earth without us long before God made us?

References

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