Category: Essays

Modern Americans are not alike their predecessors, the Puritans, who came here some four hundred years ago. The ecclesiastical identity of the Puritans put emphasis on the importance of community, family, and religious hierarchy. These values ruled American ideals until the early nineteenth century when the influence of the British Romantic movement traveled over the Atlantic to American shores. Romanticism took hold in a time when people were looking West to untamed wilderness and a new way of life, starting this shift in American identity. People no longer valued community the way they used to and some were more than willing to uproot their lives and families. This new way of thinking differed slightly from the European version, with embracement of democracy as well as stressing the importance of nature, emotion, and the individual. American authors ushered in this era of rebellion against religious tradition, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote the classical novel The Scarlet Letter and the short story Young Goodman Brown. The latter tells the story of Young Goodman Brown, a Puritan who is seemingly tempted by the devil. It is thought to be an allegory of the fall of man, with Brown being compared to Eve in the Book of Genesis. Although it does function in this sense, it can be argued that the short story is also meant to symbolize this radical time in American literary history. Young Goodman Brown physically, metaphorically, and emotionally highlights the transition of the American identity from being characterized as ecclesiastical to Romantic.

Physically, from the very beginning of the story, we see the title character, Young Goodman Brown, move from the Puritan New England village of Salem, Massachusetts to the wild and savage wilderness. Hawthorne tells us that Brown “had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overheard; so that, with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude”. The description of the natural landscape is characteristic of the Romantic movement, which is even further accentuated by the gothic and gloomy details of the forest, packing emotion into the narrative. This scene can be symbolic of the American West, as it literally depicts the American wilderness, one filled with unknown danger but also unknown promise. Most importantly, Brown physically walks from a place of value and community, meaning the ecclesiastical identity, to this new and treacherous terrain, calling attention to this drastic change. Hawthorne is making it clear that Americans are moving toward a new national identity.

In the forest, Brown finds the intermingling of commoners with the clergical elite, acting as a metaphor for the embracement of democracy. In this scene, as told by Hawthorne, “these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints.” All of the townspeople, regardless of social and religious statuses, are conversing with one another, glad to be a part of the impending ceremony. This gathering sharply contrasts the high moral and religious conviction of the Puritans, their society based on these values. Status was incredibly crucial and depended on a strong standing in the church and a mighty, moral reputation. In the forest, in this new, emotion filled landscape, this status is not only frivolous, but completely irrelevant. It is away from Salem, in the heart of the forest, within this new age of Romanticism, that the dissolution of religious hierarchy into a more democratic community, one where there is more equality between individuals, occurs. Again, there is this shift where ecclesiastical ideals are rejected and the Romantic identity is being adopted.

Lastly, the emotional internal conflict Brown has between good and evil not only drives the plot of the story, but is also characteristic of Romantic tales. The emotional plot climaxes when Hawthorne explains that “[i]n truth, all through the haunted forest, there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew, among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him.” After giving into temptation, Brown lets his developing madness take him further away from Salem. His emotional and psychological torment makes him question his surroundings, which is an indicative literary strategy of Romantics like Nathaniel Hawthorne. This amount of emotion and ability to wonder differs from the ecclesiastical mindset, which stresses structure and containment.

At the end of the story, Brown has changed. Whether the witch meeting in the forest actually occurred or whether it was all a dream is up in the air (apparently, so is Faith). But it is clear that Young Goodman Brown has gone down a road of self-discovery, one where he was tormented by his exacerbated emotions, one that is far away from the town and values he has always known. He comes back beside himself, watching the citizens of Salem go about their business under a seemingly false identity. By Brown seeing the hypocrisy in the townspeople, Hawthorne is pointing to the drastic difference between Ecclesiastical values, those that embodied the original American identity, and Romantic values, those that embody the new national identity. Ecclesiastical values were not completely erased, with a mighty, moral reputation still admired in society today, but they have been transformed, making manifest destiny socially acceptable. The American people are no longer confined to their cottages, but are rather able to go into the savage wilds, risking the possibility of being tempted by the devil, of course. Go West, young man!

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi tells the story of Firdaus, a woman who is said to have murdered a man and is to be executed the next day for her crimes. She confesses to the author, who, when first meeting Firdaus, said that “[i]t was as though I died the moment her eyes looked into mine. They were eyes that killed, like a knife, probing, cutting deep down inside, their look steady, unwavering.” It is from here that the story is told with Firdaus’s eyes rather than her mouth. The mention of Firdaus’s eyes and the eyes of others is a recurring theme throughout the novel, with eyes relating to perception and the ability to see one’s truth. This theme also functions as a means of revealing the development of Firdaus, who becomes a person who realizes self worth after being clouded by objects of value, a person who stares death in the face after years of blinding fear. Saadawi uses the motif of eyes to show Firdaus’s increasing self awareness as well as the awareness of the intention of others. The mention of eyes emphasizes her ability to perceive emotion and use memory, the combination of which produce an awakening that leads to her to self-sentenced death.

When Firdaus makes mention of others, she talks of their eyes. When describing her mother, she says that she “can remember two eyes. I can remember her eyes in particular. I cannot describe their color, or their shape. They were eyes that I watched. They were eyes that watched me.” When eyes are mentioned, they are all similar is structure, with one circle of white engulfing another circle of black, with the exception of Sharifa who has hints of green. There is a difference that Firdaus makes clear. When talking of the woman her father married after her mother died, she said that “[n]o light seemed ever to touch the eyes of this woman, even when the day was radiant and the sun at its very brightest.” Although similar in structure, the eyes mentioned have a certain quality, whether it be brightness, warmth, or lack there of. Firdaus mentions the weight of her mother’s eyes and how they were “[t]wo eyes to which I clung with all my might. Two that alone seemed to hold me up.” From a young age, she associates eyes with love and warmth. In this context, eyes are not the window to the soul, but are the soul. They become the emotional nature and energy of the person. As she grows, Firdaus finds that most people do not have the gaze of her mother or Miss Iqbal. At a ceremony in front of her boarding school, Firdaus states that “all heads turn towards me, and all eyes staring in my direction, countless eyes transformed under my gaze into innumerable rings of white surrounding innumerable circles of black, which turned in a concerted circular movement to fix their look steadily in my eyes.” The eyes of others are less like beacons and rather become spotlights. She again mentions that “[e]ach minute a thousand eyes passed in front of me, but for them I remained nonexistent.” To the world, she is not a person, but an object, one that can be disposed of without care. She tries to find feelings in the eyes of her clients, but after countless careless stares by the likes of men, she becomes cold, and all she sees in someone’s eyes is fear. And she too begins to objectify people, associating their value with their money. She tells Saadawi that she “looked people in the eyes, and if I saw someone count his money, I fixed it with an unwinking gaze.” This change is made possible by her recollection of past emotional experiences.

Eyes in Woman at Point Zero are also capable of holding emotional memory. Firdaus, when talking of her mother, says that “[a]ll [she] can remember are two rings of intense white around two circles of intense black.” The same description is used later to describe Miss Iqbal. Firdaus attempts to access this memory when she closed her eyes “and tried to bring back the scene.” By observing the same object in different points in time, there is a sharp contrast in context and feeling that shows evolution of attitude. By accessing memory, Firdaus attempts to bathe in the feelings she had been given by her mother. She tries to find comfort in a world that has gone cold on her. When she enters the city after moving back with her uncle, she remarks a bus passing, saying that “[f]rom behind the glass windows they looked out with wary, doubting, stealthy eyes, eyes preparing to pounce and full of aggression yet bordering on strangely servile.” This is a phrase she used when she was younger, and recalling it verbatim demonstrates how Firdaus is transforming within a static medium. And because of this memory storage capability, she is able to gain perspective and transformative moments have a larger impact. Recalling the piastre her father gave her when she was younger, something that held much value after she would watch him stuff his father and she would go to sleep hungry, she metamorphosed in front of the prince, saying that “[t]he movement of my hands as I tore the money to pieces, tore off the veil, the last, remaining veil from before my eyes, to reveal the whole enigma which had puzzled me throughout, the true enigma of life.” The use of eyes to show Firdaus’s emotional change and remember her titular life moments allows the veil to be removed from her vision layer by layer.

The motif of eyes relates to Firdaus’s growing realization and awareness. What is most crucial to the development of Firdaus is not what she can see, but what she is blind to. Throughout the novel, she talks about her eyes opening to view scenes that are new to her, similar to a baby’s eyes opening for the first time. What is most powerful is re-seeing, to take in a familiar scene with a different sight. She mentions a veil and how it was first maimed. She tells Saadawi that “[t]he movement of his eyes as they avoided my plate cut like a knife throughout the veil which hung over my eyes, and I realized this was the first time in my life I was eating without being watched by two eyes gazing into my plate to see how much food I took.” Remembering how her father would watch her eat, she first had a glimpse of her own self worth, her being, in that moment, more than an animal that the master is forced to feed. Through emotional observation and use of memory, she is able embrace autonomy. It is freedom that gives her this chance, her saying that “[w]hen I looked at the streets it was as though I was seeing them for the first time. A new world was opening up in front of my eyes, a world which for me had not existed before. Maybe it had always been there, always existed, but I had never seen it, never realized it had been there all the time.” With the scene fixed, the movement of her character becomes more pronounced.

When the veil is lifted, Firdaus says the enigma for life was revealed to her. The enigma, as she saw that it, was the muddling of her own self worth by men and some women who objectified her and made her objectify herself and others. She blames money, the disposability of her siblings, and the animal-like nature of men. The theme of eyes produces the broken and brave Firdaus, who is now all-knowing and is aware of the truths that many men wish to keep secret. That is why they want her dead. But she has denied pardon because the veil has been cut, sliced from her once naive eyes. She now only sees lies and unhappiness, and to continue to live with that in her vision is a fate more treacherous and painful than death.