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derriotte Black Boys Play the Classics 145
diminished. Most theorists today speak of identities rather than one unified iden-
tity that characterizes a human subject. Seen in this way, Mora’s speaker is in the
same boat with all of us and has the advantage of being aware of the complex
nature of identity. Nevertheless, the rejection she describes from both cultures
should not be discounted. The feelings she describes are legitimate, and the title
is thus appropriate.
TOI DERRICOTTE
Black Boys Play the Classics (p.730)
A search for Web sites on African Americans and classical music quickly uncov-
ers AfriClassical.com (http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/index
.html), which has concentrated on the topic since 2000. Opera singers Leontyne
Price and Jessye Norman spring to mind when thinking of African Americans in
classical music, but the Web site lists “52 composers, conductors, and instrumen-
tal performers — Africans, African Americans, and Afro- Europeans. Many are
alive today, but one lived 500 years ago! These artists are unknown to most of us,
yet are so numerous this site can present only a fraction of them. They have
made enduring contributions to Classical Music.” The Web site also has audio.
Instructors and students will find other examples of African Americans playing
classical music online. Because people of African descent have long been part of
European and American society, it should not be surprising to find them
involved in many different artistic genres. However, the stereotype of African
Americans engaging in jazz, blues, gospel, rap, or other popular forms perhaps
makes the sight of “black kids” playing Brahms surprising to the people in Penn
Station. The “[w]hite men in business suits” take the young men for granted as
street musicians who are working for contributions, but the men of color “stand
with their mouths open” — their surprise and admiration obvious and their iden-
tification with the young men sincere. They do not chide the boys for “acting
white” but appreciate their talent and their mastery of a style of music usually
identified with people of wealth, leisure, and education. While there have long
been African Americans skilled in fine arts, barriers existed until late in the twen-
tieth century. Perhaps a turning point occurred in 1939 when the Daughters of
the American Revolution (DAR) famously refused to allow Marian Anderson to
sing in Constitution Hall, prompting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign as a
member of the DAR and to arrange an outdoor concert on Easter Sunday, on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, with 75,000 people of various ethnic groups
in attendance. The event set in motion a series of changes for classical perform-
ers and was echoed in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. and others spoke at the
march on Washington and Marian Anderson stood in the same spot and sang the
National Anthem.
It should not be surprising that the boys in Penn Station play Brahms on
stringed instruments. But the stereotypes remain. By showing them in “ratty /
sneakers & T- shirts,” the poet identifies their probable economic status. This pov-
erty may be what readers rightly or wrongly expect. But the music goes against
expectations. The speaker asks, “Why does this trembling / pull us?” The word
trembling catches the vibrations of the violins and the cellos and hints at the
146 Freedom and Confinement
emotional vulnerability of the players and the watchers/listeners. She has just
described a small child absorbed in the music and the young men who are playing,
the experience evoking worship. The “pulling” is emotional and physical, a
response that only music or another deeply aesthetic experience is capable of bring-
ing out. We are attracted to those who make music, as iron to a magnet. In the final
lines, Derricotte offers two explanations for the audience’s response — perhaps
from different listeners, perhaps describing wavering feelings within each listener.
The child, the “brown men,” and the players become “one” as they experience the
music together. Of course, this penultimate image implies much more: that
human beings all share certain responses and that people of different skin colors
are not different where it counts. However, the final line wryly undercuts this idea
of equality, which after all borders on cliché. Readers might discuss tone at this
point. Is the line meant to be taken seriously, indicating true amazement? Or is the
tone ironic, mocking those who are surprised to hear young black men playing
classical music? The italic sets the last two lines apart, indicating someone’s inner
thoughts perhaps, and we may ask whose head we are in. Most likely, the thoughts
come from the “brown men” who are amazed to hear such music from people like
themselves. But why has the poet set the lines up and labeled them as if they were
points of a tentative outline or multiple- choice questions on a test? Is she imagin-
ing herself into the minds of her readers, asking us what we think, which answer
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Blood (p.732)
A great deal of autobiography goes into the writing of Naomi Shihab Nye,
whether she is writing young- adult fiction or subtle poems such as “Blood.” As
part of a family that has lived in the United States and in Israel, Nye knows a
great deal about the ethnic stereotyping represented by the poems in this cluster.
Her poem begins by quoting her father: “A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in
his hands.” The image captures the playfulness of her father, the irony of stereo-
types, and the hand- eye coordination implied in the lightning- quick action of
nye Blood 147
catching a fly. Later in the poem, the speaker’s father tells her that a “true Arab”
would understand the spiritual significance of giving back to the sky the family
name — Shihab, for “shooting star” — when one dies. The two images take the
reader from the ridiculous to the sublime, with the magic of watermelon as a
healing substance in between. By choosing these three bits of family and ethnic
folklore out of many possibilities, Nye paints a remarkably wide picture of the
culture in microcosm. “True Arabs” — in the world of the poem — are quick,
witty, wise, magical, and cosmically connected. Therefore, when a girl comes to
the door “to see the Arab,” the reader knows a bit about what an Arab may be,
although the sort of Arab she seeks, the stereotype, is not there. The speaker’s
words — “I said we didn’t have one” — become ironic. Yes, the daughter of the
Arab is giving a correctly dismissive answer to the budding bigot; but by juxtapos-
ing this denial with the image of “who he was, / ‘Shihab’ — ‘Shooting star’ — / a
good name, borrowed from the sky,” she invites the reader to see the answer not
as rejection of her father’s identity but as an understanding of its complexity.
By talking within the group about what makes a “true Arab,” the dialogue in
this poem challenges the simplistic stereotype. However, such definitions within
an ethnic group can lead to chauvinism as well as self- respect. Ethnic groups
within a larger culture risk becoming insular and defensive, holding on to eso-
teric knowledge that leads to more discrimination and prejudice, since
xenophobia — fear of the unknown, of foreigners — thrives in an atmosphere of
ignorance. When we engage in discussions of what makes a “true American,” the
worst sort of arrogance may emerge. Gender stereotypes reign as we ask what
makes a “true man” or a “true woman”; regional prejudices come out as we try
to define what makes a “true” Texan or New Yorker or Tarheel or Sooner.
Immigrants with British accents or travelers from one part of the United States
to another are familiar with being asked to demonstrate their amusing accents,
in much the same way as the girl in the poem asks to see the Arab, as if he were
a museum exhibit or a performer in a freak show. Curiosity can be genuine and
has the potential to enhance understanding between cultures, but a danger exists
when curiosity is left as simply an awareness of an exotic Other rather than a
person with whom we might engage in dialogue.
Many readers can relate to the final two stanzas of Nye’s poem, in which
both she and her father are dismayed by news from the Middle East. It is really
too much for the heart to bear. Readers may notice at this point a possible double
meaning for the title. The word blood has the obvious meaning of kinship, the
figurative meaning of horror (“the headlines clot in my blood”), and the literal
meaning of blood shed in war. When we read the words “neither of his two lan-
guages can reach it,” we understand the sense of futility as her father is unable
to articulate the bewildering reality of religious and ethnic conflicts between
Palestinians and Israelis. The speaker of the poem seeks to articulate her grief
with powerful metaphors: “the headlines clot in my blood . . . this tragedy [has]
a terrible root / is too big for us. . . . I drive into the country to . . . plead with the
air.” However, she, like her father, feels the emptiness of “plead[ing] with
theair,” a powerful image of speaking without being heard. Readers who have
been through trauma that resists language may sense the purpose of her drive to
the country; sometimes we have to get away from everyone and scream out our
agony where no one can hear. She captures the helpless, desperate feeling of not
148 Freedom and Confinement
being able to control the violent actions of others or the suffering of people who
are tied up in her family’s identity.
The last lines of the poem invite the reader to think about answers to the
three questions she proposes. Who, indeed, would look at war and oppression
and call human beings civilized? We might ask for definitions of civilization,
recalling that in Native American history, the “civilized tribes” were defined by
European settlers as those who lived much like the settlers did, including adopt-
ing the practice of enslaving other ethnic groups. Early civilizations in Egypt and
Mesopotamia ( present- day Iraq) existed because wide- scale farming, war, and
building projects required forced labor. Perhaps, because civilization is con-
nected with living in the city, the speaker drives to a rural setting to think. It may
be that civilization itself is the “tragedy with a terrible root” that Nye mentions
as she describes the front- page image of war. The victim of war, perhaps repre-
senting the ethnic group to which both he and the speaker belong, is “[a] little
Palestinian . . . [and a h]omeless fig.” The images foreground vulnerability and
inspire empathy. The question “Where can the crying heart graze?” may berhe-
torical, implying that no such place exists, even at the end of her desperate drive.
This space outside of civilization brings no peace; it provides only the quiet in
which to formulate questions. The final question seems ironic, since the whole
poem has raised the issues of definition, asking what makes a “true Arab”: catch-
ing flies, applying healing watermelon, and looking to the stars do not have the
power to change this situation. Like the penultimate question, the final one may
have no answer. Can anything be done to bring about peace and justice? Could
we answer the question “What is a caring human being to do now?”
As an Arab American, the speaker of Nye’s poem is a member of a minority
group that may have more problems assimilating into the American mainstream
(if indeed such assimilation is to be desired) than any other. Since September11,
2001, prejudice toward persons of Arab, Iranian, Iraqi, or other Middle Eastern
descent is more open than prejudice toward other groups, for anyone who might
be Muslim is popularly seen as the enemy. Issues surrounding illegal immigra-
tion swirl around Mexican Americans, but Pat Mora’s dual ethnicity increasingly
seems less exotic and foreign, and Spanish classes have become filled as English-
speaking Americans seek to work in the sort of job Mora describes in her poem,
becoming fluent in both languages. Students who have lived through the experi-
ence of being “hyphenated Americans” may offer views on the unique position
of various ethnic groups, although instructors should be sensitive to their possible
reluctance to share and should not call on “token” students, making assumptions
based on names or appearances. To single out individual students would be to
fall into the trap of stereotyping. As we look back over the poems, readers may
disagree about which speaker seems angriest, making a case for submerged rage
that is expressed with irony or sarcasm rather than openly angry statements such
as those made by Chrystos. A case could be made for Nye’s poem as the saddest,
making it a good choice as the final poem in the cluster. Thinking about the
question of which speaker seems “most understanding,” you will need to clarify
what is meant by “understanding” and question whether the tolerance implied
would be appropriate in poems that seek to have readers face difficult truths,
perhaps examining our own preconceptions of certain ethnic groups. Do the
poets refuse to allow readers the comforts of denial? The “most understanding”
dikinson Wild Nights — Wild Nights! 149
speaker may be the naive fourteen- year- old Japanese American girl preparing
to make a forced move to an internment camp. The underlying irony of the
text — the author and the reader know more about history and institutionalized
racism than does the speaker — highlights the innocence of her “understanding”
and tolerance. No understanding is possible when stereotyping becomes
government- sanctioned profiling.
As we emphasize in the early chapters of this book, we do not want to think
in terms of one single universal theme as we explore the intertextuality of these
poems; we want to consider a number of possible themes. Keeping this qualifica-
tion in mind, however, many readers will acknowledge a theme running through
the poems: prejudice and stereotyping are more subtle operations than readers
in dominant groups may at first believe, and we may engage in them without
realizing that we are doing so. Another theme may deal with definitions of iden-
tity. We tend to think of ourselves as having one seamless identity, an individual
self or ego that somehow transcends the minutiae of changing social situations.
Because they stand at a place where ethnic identities and cultures meet, the
speakers of these poems challenge all readers to realize that it is more reasonable
to think in terms of multiple, shifting identities, the human subject being a com-
plex construct that is constantly under revision.
A CREATIVE CONFINEMENT: POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON
(p.734)
EMILY DICKINSON
Wild Nights — Wild Nights! (p.734)
When pulling together the poetry of Emily Dickinson for publication after her
death, Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote, “One poem only I dread a little to
print — that wonderful ‘Wild Nights,’ — lest the malignant read into it more
thanthat virgin recluse ever dreamed of putting there.” However, he went on to
say that the poem was too good to leave out. So what is so dangerously sexy about
this poem? Some readers have argued that the experience is a mystical one, espe-
cially given the capitalized “Thee” in the final line: perhaps Dickinson speaks of
God? Others take the maritime imagery seriously: does “Thee” signify a personi-
fied sea? Most readers, however, sense passionate, erotic intensity underlying
Dickinson’s words, though the deceptively simple, contrasting metaphors have
proven difficult to unravel. Are “wild nights” something to be desired, symboliz-
ing sexual abandon? Or does the speaker refer to restless lack of sleep, tossing and
turning with unfulfilled desire, something she could bear once in a while if she
were often sheltered in the safety of a lover’s arms? A “luxury” is something extra,
icing on the cake. Keeping this definition in mind, the more desirable relation-
ship is a quiet one, and the “wild nights” would be a “luxury” beyond a safe harbor
that is not wild at all.
Readers in the twenty- first century most often see the “wild nights” as the
consummation of desire. Such readers see the abandonment of chart and com-
pass as throwing convention to the winds and surrendering to passionate love. But
150 Freedom and Confinement
we might note that when the speaker is “in port,” she no longer needs these tools
of navigation. “Rowing in Eden,” she cries out to passionate love, psychologically
symbolized by the sea, and ironically she seeks to “moor” in the wild waves rather
than to labor over her oars in the lagoon of the garden of innocence. The port
may symbolize the speaker’s isolation, the ocean her union with a lover. Perhaps
this is Eve, seeking a fall.
Were the speaker a man, or a woman who seeks a female lover, the final
image would resonate in psychoanalytic terms. A garden in a dream, a poem, or
a myth is usually agreed to be female imagery, and a place where one might
“moor” has female connotations, as well. Yet one might also imagine a hetero-
sexual lover’s arms as a harbor and the speaker as a woman who seeks more than
one sort of love from a man. Perhaps both the “wild nights” of the opening stanza
and the garden and harbor of the final lines symbolize sexuality, the poem
engaging in multiple orgasms. In Dickinson’s handwritten manuscript of this
poem, the word Ah is followed by an exclamation point rather than a comma.
This punctuation invites a reading of sexual climax at this point in the poem, and
the sea is often seen as an image of sexual consummation. Perhaps the speaker
wishes to stay in the lover’s arms all night in the afterglow of this moment of pas-
sion; or she may wish for marriage in contrast to brief, secret encounters. The
image of mooring indicates peace and permanence, in contrast to the wildness
and the winds of fleeting desire.
EMILY DICKINSON
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant — (p.736)
The term slant, in its adjectival form, is typically understood as meaning
“sloped” or even “tilted.” At the very least, a slant implies an angle, or something
neither horizontal nor vertical in orientation. So what might this mean for
truthor for storytelling? In “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant — ,” poet Emily
Dickinson argues for a sideways, sloped, or even tilted approach to truth. By this
she seems to mean that for truth to have resonance for listeners, for us to actually
make sense of it, it cannot be in its purest or most direct form. Dickinson com-
pares truth to lightning, in that as children we needed to become accustomed to
seeing its bright, jagged shape across the sky. Truth, too, must come to us a bit
more indirectly so that we can take it in. We need time to let it grow. Like too
bright a light, she explains, the truth can dazzle us into blindness, if we don’t
come at it gently and from the side. Poetry, by virtue of its attempts to capture
the visual, the emotive, and the ephemeral in verse, coincides neatly with
Dickinson’s approach to truth. Even this poem, short as it is, takes more time to
work toward its claim about truth, coming into the topic at a slant by using light-
ning and lighting metaphorically. To come at a slant seems to mean working
toward understanding, rather than having pure comprehension thrust upon you.
For students, this might provide a helpful model for reading. If we stop at the first
line, what level of understanding do we have? How fully can we capture the
author’s aims? By working through a text line by line — getting to know it more
slowly — we can often have a richer and more nuanced understanding of its
meaning.
dikinson I’m Nobody! Who are you? 151
EMILY DICKINSON
Much Madness is divinest Sense — (p.736)
Emily Dickinson was known for being a recluse throughout much of her life,
and as the introduction explains in greater detail, she lived for many years fairly
isolated. This poem, “Much Madness is divinest Sense — ,” is thus often read as
a defense of her seclusion and her reluctance to participate in the lives of her
neighbors. The poem maintains, for example, that if you do not “assent” to the
majority, you are considered “straightaway dangerous” (line 7), perhaps hinting
at claims of Dickinson’s eccentricity. But there seems to be some freedom,
whether spiritual or psychological, in the kind of demurring she practices, for she
also claims that “Much Madness is divinest Sense — / To a discerning Eye — ”
(lines 1–2). This suggests that what the majority decides is sense does not make
it so; rather, there is room for reason if one is willing to take the risk. By calling
some madness “divinest Sense,” Dickinson implies that the form of madness she
values is far from actual madness and is instead something akin to spiritual truth.
It is inaccessible to the realm of the majority. Indeed, despite the use of chains
to confine dissenters, the majority is itself confined by its limited worldview. The
majority is usually wrong because it does not see the world through a discerning
eye, being instead wrapped up in its own power. And, as many readers might
know from their own experiences, whether in everyday social situations or larger
political ones, sometimes a group mentality can take over and leave dissenters at
the wayside. Being a dissenter can be a dangerous position, but Dickinson seems
to suggest that it can be one worth taking up.
EMILY DICKINSON
I’m Nobody! Who are you? (p.737)
Like “Much Madness is divinest Sense — ,” Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody!
Who are you?” has unmistakable autobiographical overtones. Contending with
issues of anonymity, this poem argues that there’s something to be gained from
privacy, from walking through the world as a Nobody. And there can be com-
pany even in this anonymity, for us readers, she writes, might be Nobodies, too!
Because Dickinson was somewhat of a loner, we might imagine that she sees her
readers as similarly apart from the majority. She explains in the second stanza
that being a Somebody must be a dreary business. By using words like frog and
bog to describe Somebodies and the people they talk to, she seems to also down-
play their importance in society. What would an “admiring Bog” even look like?
Who would want to be one? Or speak to one? We are left to wonder whether
Dickinson would like the acclaim she’s earned since her poems were first
written. After all, in contemporary culture, many celebrities find fame utterly
exhausting — almost a confining freedom, because even the most mundane
aspects of their lives are documented by paparazzi and analyzed by fans. Some
even seek out anonymity through disguises and secret trips abroad. Dickinson
here invites our contemplation about the benefits and potential freedoms
entailed in living small.
152 Freedom and Confinement
DOMESTIC PRISONS: PLAYS (p.739)
SuSAN GLASPELL
Trifles (p.740)
Students are likely to find Susan Glaspell’s Trifles an interesting play, espe-
cially if they read it aloud or even stage it. Each of these things is easy to do,
given the work’s brevity. Perhaps some of your students will object to Glaspell’s
implication that men and women differ markedly in their values, ideas, and
experiences. Alternatively, some might argue that gender divisions are much
less evident today than they were in the early twentieth century. If your class
does debate gender relations today, try to focus the discussion on actual events
in the news; otherwise, comments may remain on too general a level to be
useful. Perhaps students will think of a recent case or two in which a woman
who murdered a domestic partner gained sympathy from members of the
public.
Fictional analogies may work just as well. For instance, your class may be
familiar with the film Sleeping with the Enemy, in which the character played by
Julia Roberts initially flees her abusive husband and is later forced to destroy
him. Students may also have seen Enough, a Jennifer Lopez film with a similar
plot. Understandably, the class may want to distinguish between physical abuse
and psychological abuse, with John Wright in Trifles evidently being guilty of the
latter. But can psychological abuse ever be comparable to physical abuse? You
might raise this issue.
Try, eventually, to bring the class’s attention back to the gender dynamics
actually operating in the play. In addition to the play’s treatment of distinctions
between men and women is the issue of how loyal the two women “detectives”
should be to Minnie Wright. Their decision to cover up evidence of her act is,
in a sense, the climax of the play, so Glaspell clearly is concerned about the
degree of responsibility they feel toward her. Because they have failed to bring
Minnie Wright into a community of women, in spite of her husband’s disagree-
able attitude, the neighboring housewives arguably do bear some responsibility
for her fate. Quilting, usually a communal activity, has been a solitary one for
this lonely woman. Students who reach for their cell phones as soon as class is
over should consider the details Glaspell gives us about Mrs. Wright’s total
isolation. She has been denied a telephone and cannot even see the road from
her home. No televisions exist, and there is no indication that the Wrights have
a radio. The only creature whose voice relieves the silence is the canary, and
Mr.Wright has apparently taken this away from his wife as well. Even students
majoring in criminal justice should be able to get the point, though many
student readers do not, arguing that crimes must be punished. The point may
be not whether murder in this case is okay but, instead, that trifles are not
astrivial as they may at first appear and that isolation and confinement can
befatal.
As students compare Susan Glaspell’s Trifles with the earlier play, A Doll’s
House by Henrik Ibsen, they may be struck by the differences in expectations
that social class imposes on nineteenth- and early- twentieth- century women.
nottage POOF! 153
Nora Torvald is expected to remain her well- to- do husband’s childish plaything,
and the lower- class Minnie Wright is allowed only drudgery and isolation, but
both women are equally confined by societal rules for married women. And both
women break the rules in small ways, Nora nibbling on forbidden sweets and
Minnie (symbolically, most readers agree) keeping a caged bird. Both move on,
however, to challenge their confinement in a dramatic way. Nora compromises
her morality for money to help her father but then leaves her family at the play’s
end. Minnie turns her expertise in quilting, a traditional woman’s art, to murder.
Both actions would seem monstrous to their contemporaries, but the audience
is allowed to understand the desperation behind them. The metaphors implied
in the titles and the symbols within the plays evoke the female characters’ infe-
rior status and confinement. Nora is trapped in a space that is too small for her
spirit, a “doll house” meant for little girls. She must escape before she can
become an autonomous human being. The title of Glaspell’s play Trifles simi-
larly implies that a woman’s desires and concerns are inconsequential in a patri-
archal society. Just as Nora is trapped in a child’s playhouse, Minnie Wright is
like a canary kept in a cage. Although the symbolism may seem too obvious to
please some critics, student readers enjoy its appropriateness to the situations in
the plays.
LYNN NOTTAGE
POOF! (p.751)
Lynn Nottage’s 1993 play POOF! dramatizes the spontaneous combustion of
Samuel, Loureen’s abusive husband, and the subsequent discussion between
Loureen and Florence of what to do next. Since the play is explicitly set in “the
present,” the audience can infer both a timeliness and a universality to the plot.
While it becomes clear in the play that Samuel regularly beat and terrorized
Loureen, perhaps even cheated on her, her status as a “demure housewife” sug-
gests that her role in the marriage has been to support Samuel and his career.
Indeed, she may have viewed the marriage as her only means of support. After
Samuel combusts on the kitchen floor, Loureen’s emotions range from disbelief
to fear to guilt to a kind of hysteria and finally to hope. It is not until she talks
herself around to accepting Samuel’s death that she can imagine life beyond
him. Interestingly, however, the play does not make clear how Loureen’s free-
dom from Samuel might affect Florence’s ability to free herself from Edgar, her
own abusive husband. Florence is disappointed early on that Loureen got rid of
Samuel on her own, but, throughout, her own behavior continues to be influ-
enced by Edgar. In the end, the two women agree to meet for cards (rather than
dinner) to keep Edgar happy.
POOF! is particularly remarkable for its use of dark humor to deal with such
a traumatic subject; rather than being a play about abuse, it is a play about an
unexpected triumph. Spontaneous combustion, in stark contrast to domestic
violence, is difficult to take seriously, which absolves the audience from having
to grieve Samuel’s loss. Such a contrast is provocative in part because Samuel no
longer has a body with which to physically and emotionally abuse his wife. He
has been erased; in the end, he is actually swept under the rug, a move that eerily
154 Freedom and Confinement
echoes the common state of domestic abuse. This erasure, coupled with the lack
of actual violence on Loureen’s part, opens up a space for dialogue between
Loureen and Florence.
LITERATURE AND CURRENT ISSUES: DOES OUR HAPPINESS
DEPEND ON OTHERS’ MISERY? (p.759)
uRSuLAK.LE GuIN
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (p.760)
UrsulaK.Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” published in
1973, describes the “ bright- towered” city of Omelas and its dark secret: the com-
plex, even enviable, happiness of its citizens comes at the expense of an impris-
oned and abused child. While everyone knows of this child’s wretched
existence — indeed, many come to visit and witness his or her misery — most
return to their lives in Omelas with a richer capacity for happiness. The narrator
explains that the “trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helpless-
ness” are “the true source of the splendor of their lives.” And their lives, to be
sure, seem splendid. For the first several paragraphs, readers are treated to
detailed passages about not only the beauty and utter perfection of Omelas — fine
weather, spirited horses, sweet air and music — but also the nature of the happi-
ness that characterizes Omelas’s citizens. Their happiness, the narrator explains,
is a “boundless and generous contentment,” without guilt, based on a celebra-
tion of life. The narrator at times struggles to communicate the depth of citizens’
sheer happiness, at one point inviting the reader to collaborate in imagining just
how marvelous such a place must be.
The neglected child is, many have argued, the scapegoat of the community.
Tradition holds that if the child were released from his or her dark closet, “if it
were cleaned and fed and comforted,” the “prosperity and beauty and delight of
Omelas” would be destroyed. It is not clear whether or not this would actually
happen, but citizens’ continued participation in the ritual makes it in many ways
a self- fulfilling prophecy. Recalling real- world exploitation, this sacrificial rela-
tionship serves to maintain a quality of life for those not imprisoned. Providing
more than simply material comforts, however, the child seems to create a kind
of emotional richness that makes possible “the poignancy of their music” and
“the profundity of their science.” Once the people of Omelas move beyond their
grief and outrage, most come to decide that it would be folly to sacrifice the hap-
piness of so many for one child. The narrator suggests that they live sweeter
knowing the child is there.
Not all are able to accept the child’s treatment, however, and there are some
who leave Omelas for some distant, unnamed place. Readers can well imagine
why one might feel compelled to leave, though it may be harder to imagine why
concerned citizens don’t simply help the child. Why leave him or her behind to
suffer? Does leaving make the situation any better? The narrator mentions at
several points that guilt has no place within the walls of Omelas; so we might see
those who “walk away” as bearing the guilt or shame that the city’s citizens refuse
le guin The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 155
to accept. We might then ask, however, whether walking away is truly a rejection
or Omelas’s tradition or a kind of tacit acceptance.
ARGUMENTS ON THE ISSUE
david brooks, The Child in the Basement (p.766)
john r. ehrenfeld, The Error of Trying to Measure
Good and Bad (p.768)
Columnist David Brooks’s “The Child in the Basement” is a contemporary
response to Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Brooks
notes that there are a number of ways to interpret LeGuin’s short story, including
reading it as a “challenge to the utilitarian mindset so prevalent today.” By this,
he means that in many facets of modern life, from our military interventions to
our economic system, we tend to treat people in a utilitarian fashion, assuming
that they exist as objects to serve our societal ends. This can have arguably tragic
consequences. Despite our “moral imperative” to view everyone as equally wor-
thy of life, many are still sacrificed — in what Brooks calls “trade offs” — to sup-
ply the “greatest good for the greatest number” of people or to develop the most
sophisticated weapons of war. Exploitation offers a similar lens through which
we, like Brooks, might read LeGuin’s story, particularly when one considers how
manyU.S.companies outsource labor to countries with less rigorous labor laws.
Readers on the West Coast or in the South might even reference the current
agricultural scene, in which thousands of migrants, including young children,
labor for long hours with little pay and poor living conditions during the harvest
and planting seasons — all to maintain consumers’ preferred low prices of fruits
and vegetables.
Brooks argues that readers tend to be moved by the story of Omelas because
we are forced to confront our own complacency regarding the exploitations on
which our lives are built. LeGuin makes us want to do better, even if that means
walking away from some of our creature comforts or taking up more radical posi-
tions outside the status quo. The article’s final point, however, offers a bit less
hope. In observing that the town of Omelas could be one person’s psyche, with
“idealism and moral sensitivity locked in the basement,” Brooks implies that
wemay actually be unable to free ourselves from this situation. We might be in
too deep.
In “The Error of Trying to Measure Good and Bad,” academic John
Ehrenfeld critiques David Brooks’s assumption that utilitarianism can be at all
rationalized in our understanding of, and perhaps identification with, the citi-
zens of LeGuin’s “Omelas.” Ehrenfeld argues that those who remain in Omelas
are indeed “bad,” because they have traded off these moral categories. Accepting
and rationalizing the system does not then make the systemOK.In response to
Brooks, Ehrenfeld embraces Kant’s argument that we should under no circum-
stances treat human beings as means — only as ends. He connects this to a duty-
based ethics, such as Judaism’s commitment to lovingkindness.
However, such an approach is a bit complicated when one considers that
“rationality” is not universally shared and its definition not universally agreed
upon. If our conceptions of what the categorical imperative looks like are derived
156 Freedom and Confinement
from our own culture, our experiences, our education, and so on, it is not
unthinkable that people in other parts of the world might have different ways of
treating others. Ehrenfeld ignores the potential complications of assuming a
universal ethics, complications with which those in animal rights and environ-
mental activism, for example, are very familiar.
Ehrenfeld further argues that Brooks has missed the main point of LeGuin’s
story, which is that people must choose between different categories of ethics.
This, he explains, is not unlike the situation the United States finds itself in
today; the founding fathers’ attention to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
reflects just such a juxtaposition of ethical categories, one that we tend to ignore.
In making “bad” another value to be weighed rather than recognizing it as an
absolute, we find ourselves rationalizing the inhumane treatment of prisoners of
war and justifying other human rights violations.
LITERATURE AND CURRENT ISSUES: WHAT AREN’T
YOU FREE TO SAY? (p.773)
ARIEL DORFMAN
The Gospel According to Garcia (p.775)
“The Gospel According to Garcia,” by Ariel Dorfman, offers brief glimpses into
the conversations and world- changing efforts in Garcia’s remedial English
class. This “gospel” seems to have much to do with how the class participants
learn to interact, or not, within an arguably oppressive system. For example,
the narrator explains that Garcia has taught them to hold something of them-
selves back, to keep secrets, to know when to keep quiet, to learn the enemy’s
language. These are, in some ways, strategies for survival in a world that doesn’t
welcome you. The students’ impression is that Garcia is dead, although details
suggest that he may only have been dismissed from his teaching position. They
are sure, though, that only death would keep him from their company. It seems
that, either way, the system he critiqued removed him from his position of
influence.
Some of Garcia’s pronouncements do seem far- fetched, for example, his
insistence on not breaking the fifteen minutes of silence that descended on class
one day. But others sound perfectly reasonable, especially when readers consider
the marginalized populations or nontraditional students with whom Garcia is
working. His rejection of standard grading guidelines is one moment that stands
out as a meaningful intervention into a system in which these students have
ostensibly failed — or that has failed them. Those areas balance out what are
sometimes intimidation tactics.
Garcia’s later claim that “indifference is worse than murder” suggests to
readers that he is trying to foster an ethic of care, a compassion for others’ rights,
and a rejection of indifference among his students. His faith in them is unparal-
leled, but most interesting is his insistence that by the end of the class they be
independent and beyond his influence. He is not trying to create a class of aco-
lytes so much as equip them for meaningful work, and resistance, in the world.
dorfman The Gospel According to Garcia 157
ARGUMENTS ON THE ISSUE
atherine rampell, Free Speech Is Flunking Out on College
Campuses (p.782)
geoffrey r. stone and will reeley, Restoring Free Speech
on Campus (p.784)
niholas kristof, Mizzou, Yale and Free Speech (p.787)
In her opening gambit to “Free Speech Is Flunking Out on College Campuses,”
columnist Catherine Rampell frames the rights of transgender students, students
of color, women, and others to “safe” spaces in opposition to everyone’s right to
free speech. Her case study is a recent column in the Welseyan University student
newspaper that offers a “provocative” critique of the Black Lives Matter move-
ment and its methods. But more attention to the movement, including what
brought it about, as well as to the op- ed under critique, would have helped make
Rampell’s point more concrete. In addition, readers might find that the conflict
of interests she poses here problematically groups together under one umbrella a
range of marginalized populations. Rampell, echoing recent comments by
President Obama, argues that these threats to free speech arise from liberal uni-
versities’ “coddling” of students, then subsequently downplays the legitimate need
for safety by terming these oppositions merely “opposing viewpoints.” But some
readers might note that many of these groups are threatened not simply by words
but also by violent actions — for example, sexual assault victims. For Rampell,
however, this seems to be an issue of these marginalized students’ lack of toler-
ance for dissenting views. Phrases like “ peer- on- peer muzzling,” “groveling apol-
ogy,” and “ self- flagellation” point to her fears that populations like the transgender
community or students of color have considerably more power to control dis-
course than others. The “terrible lesson” Wesleyan students will receive, she
argues, is that “dissent will be punished.” Students might also come to think they
are “too fragile” to hear unpopular views. Other lessons that Rampell doesn’t
consider might include the lesson that groups marginalized in society at large can
be safe on college campuses and that students have the power to enact change
peacefully, as they did in this case. She concludes with the point that more speech
is always better than less, but interestingly, she doesn’t term students’ protests
about the “provocative” column, or their petition to have that particular student
newspaper’s funding limited, as also acts of free speech.
Geoffrey Stone and Will Creeley’s “Restoring Free Speech on Campus” offers
a wide range of examples to support the authors’ claim that free speech is threatened
by university oversight. Some examples of faculty censorship, such as Alice Dreger,
who resigned in protest over the censorship of an academic journal, or Laura Kipnis’s
Title IX investigation, sound like conservative complaints against liberal professors.
Others, including the University of California’s “Statement of Principles against
Intolerance” and other institutions’ attempts to ban “microaggressions,” read more
like liberal complaints against students, staff, or professors who offend minority or
other disenfranchised groups. Later in the piece, Stone and Creeley mention “illib-
eral speech codes” across campuses that restrict what can be said — restrictions that
the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the authors themselves
believe count as protected speech. While it’s not clear precisely what Stone and
158 Freedom and Confinement
Creeley mean by “illiberal speech codes,” context suggests that such speech codes
protect other students from speech that might be read as offensive.
What seems to be at issue is the way in which some students’ speech acts actu-
ally cause harm to other students, and this is not a position that the authors address.
They don’t see this kind of protection or censorship as the university’s role and
instead privilege protecting the right to speak one’s mind over the right to operate
in a university environment as free as possible from hate or other offensive speech.
Worthy of further consideration might be the differences between “unwelcome,”
“disagreeable,” and “offensive,” as well as how the lines are drawn between hate
speech and simply a difference of opinion. As other authors have noted, readers
might also continue thinking through the rights of students to respond to speech
they hear as offensive or otherwise problematic, as well as the effects of censorship
on students who feel they have compelling and worthy arguments to make.
In his 2015 article “Mizzou, Yale, and Free Speech,” columnist Nicholas
Kristof attempts to negotiate the two “noble forces” in conflict on university cam-
puses. These forces, broadly understood, include both the political right’s concern
for students’ and faculty’s right to (even unpopular) free speech and the political
left’s concern for minority or marginalized students who often feel like outsiders
on university campuses. Kristof’s politics might paint him as slightly more sympa-
thetic to the liberal side, but his observation that “moral voices can also become
sanctimonious bullies” shows that any investment in protecting the rights of minor-
ity students is tempered by his interest in ensuring that all students feel welcomed
and supported. He notes that intolerance is “disproportionately an instinct on the
left” and praises evangelical Christian campuses, for example, for inviting him to
speak about issues like birth control and women’s right to choose.
Kristof does point out, though, that certain forms of “free speech” clearly
inhibit the rights of others, citing the example of centerfolds in the workplace.
The Halloween controversy is a trickier case, because some argue that the choice
of what costume to wear is not an issue of free speech. Some believe that the
right of minority students to live and work in an environment that doesn’t shame
or ridicule aspects of their cultures trumps others’ right to wear Halloween cos-
tumes of choice. Kristof falls on the side of protecting students’ right to that safe
and nurturing environment. Ultimately, one of his chief contributions to the
conversation is a refusal to demonize either side. Speech that makes us uncom-
fortable is a fact of life, he notes at the end of the piece, and we should recognize
the kind of flexibility and tolerance required to support a variety of viewpoints.
CONTEXTS FOR RESEARCH: DOMESTICITY, WOMEN’S RIGHTS,
AND
A
DOLL’S HOUSE
(p.791)
HENRIK IBSEN
A Doll’s House (p.792)
It’s been said that when Nora Helmer first slammed the door on her marriage in
the final scene of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House, the windows shook in
houses all over Europe. Ibsen’s first audiences were shocked that Nora chooses to
ibsen A Doll’s House 159
leave a loving, indulgent husband for what they saw as a difficult and shameful
future. The husband’s language and behavior, which seem so patronizing and
demeaning to current readers, were seen as appropriate and even admirable, and
Nora’s desertion of her children seemed the most unnatural action a woman
could take. In some countries, the ending was changed: Nora turns back and stays
for the sake of the children. We need to explain to our students or have them do
research on divorce in the nineteenth century so that they will realize that Torvald
Helmer has complete power over the lives and welfare of the children, just as he
legally has control over Nora herself. Nora has only the maternal rights he allows
her. The first thought of present- day readers, that she should take the children
with her to ensure that they will not repeat the mistakes of their parents’ faulty
relationship, is anachronistic. This is not a choice that Nora can make.
What happens to Nora after the door closes behind her often dominates
class discussions. Does she change her mind and return as soon as she realizes
how hard life will be for her? Is Torvald capable of changing, as his words at the
end of the play seem to indicate? What does happen to those children? The
question of what happens after the door slams is so common in literature classes
that the British comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus was assured of an
audience when it featured recurring scenarios showing Nora’s possible fate. The
funniest may be the scene in which she walks into the street only to be trampled
by a passing parade of suffragists. The ironic joke makes sense because we also
realize that A Doll’s House invites feminist readings.
Although Ibsen denied that he had a feminist intent in writing the play,
Nora’s character can be understood only in the context of women’s position in
marriage and in the financial world. To students, Torvald’s paternalism toward his
wife seems inconceivably controlling, and her manipulation and lying seem
painfully weak — embarrassing to watch. The character traits in Nora that current
readers hold in contempt are those reflected in the title; we are disgusted that she
behaves as a child, even a plaything. But she sees herself as taking care of her
men. She leaves not so much because Torvald has behaved as a petty god but
because he does not carry the “bargain” to its conclusion and rescue her or sacri-
fice himself for her completely. We cannot emphasize strongly enough that
Torvald Helmer lives exactly as his culture told him he should. Students may
know men today who live by a rigid code of honor and who control their families
like tyrants, and they may in fact recognize their fathers in Torvald. Objections
that the childish, manipulative woman stereotype is specific to the Victorian era
can be forestalled by juxtaposing almost any 1950s episode of I Love Lucy with
the scenes of Nora hiding macaroons and elaborately manipulating to hide her
financial misdeeds. Lucy Ricardo is cute and dumb, always hiding things and
disobeying her husband’s rules; Ricky is indulgent and controlling, easily angered,
concerned about what others might think. Nor should we assume that the child-
ish role of the wife has disappeared. This writer knows of two young working
mothers who have agreed to retrieve mail for each other so that their husbands do
not see the credit- card bills until they get their stories straight. Although they deal
with financial matters at work competently and honestly and go home to function
as good mothers, both tend to slip into roles not unlike Nora’s. Ibsen’s use of the
tarantella is often interpreted as “stage business” that is meant primarily to hold
the attention of the audience. But taken symbolically, its frantic, abnormal energy
160 Freedom and Confinement
aptly depicts the emotional strain of such relationships. When one partner
“dances” as fast as she can to distract the other into allowing her a shred of
autonomy, she reenacts the medieval phenomenon that lies behind the tarantella:
bitten by a spider, the victim dances herself to death.
CONTEXTS FOR RESEARCH
august strindberg, Woman in A Doll’s House (p.847)
emma goldman, Review of A Doll’s House (p.851)
joan templeton, From “The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism,
and Ibsen” (p.855)
susanna rustin, Why A Doll’s House Is More
Relevant than Ever (p.859)
August Strindberg’s “Woman in A Doll’s House” is representative of some critical
responses to Henrik Ibsen’s play, in that he finds Nora’s character something less
than ideal. It’s been argued that Strindberg was a bit misogynistic in his treatment
of women, and some of that tendency comes out in this critique. He notes early
on, for example, that Nora has been taken up as a role model by all “depraved
cultured women.” Although it’s not a stretch to see Nora as multifaceted — she
is not necessarily an obvious heroine — Strindberg begins his reaction to the play
by framing anyone who disagrees with him (namely, women) as “depraved.” He
later remarks that Torvald trusted Nora “as a man should trust his wife.”
Contemporary readers of the play, however, might find Torvald more than a little
overprotective, if not micromanaging. What level of trust should a wife receive?
The trust Strindberg mentions here reveals his own arguably limited view of
what an equality of trust might look like. Although Torvald’s endearments to
Nora grow excessive, Strindberg nevertheless offers a useful way of imagining
him as also a victim of societal constraints. He and his wife have mutually rein-
forced their relationship, and, as Ibsen writes him, Torvald is not necessarily a
well- rounded character.
At the same time, Strindberg seems unable to recognize the social and eco-
nomic structures alluded to in Ibsen’s memorandum that might have set the
conditions for Nora’s desperate act of forgery. Rather, he zeroes in on the scene
where she flirts with the Doctor as evidence of her pernicious character and, in
a moment of sarcasm, calls this scene “idealistic and charming.” For the play’s
audience, the interaction between Nora and the Doctor is no compliment to
Nora. Although she wisely does not exploit his confessed love for her, she comes
across as inconstant, at the very least. We might nevertheless see this exchange
as evidence of her limited options. As Nora explains to her friend early on, she
has worked for some time to pay off her debt by taking in needlework, copying,
and so on. Though hardly level- headed, she is no stranger to hard work.
Emma Goldman, a radical activist from the early twentieth century,
reviewed Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in 1914 and found Nora a fascinating
and complex character. She seems most impressed by Nora’s love for her hus-
band, Torvald, and the steps she’s willing to take to “fight for life.” Goldman
paints the play as a narrative of overcoming, and readers of Goldman’s review
ibsen A Doll’s House 161
might be left with the impression that Torvald truly did not deserve so steadfast
a woman. Indeed, she frames Krogstad, the man who had intended to blackmail
Nora, even more sympathetically than Torvald. Whereas Torvald is seen as a
fairly one- dimensional “moralist” and more concerned with what people think
of him than with justice, Krogstad comes across as a fighter similar in character
to Nora. Goldman notes that he seeks to rise above people’s opinions of him and
make a good life for himself and his children. Krogstad even experiences per-
sonal growth over the course of the play, much like Nora, whereas Torvald
becomes “a stranger.” Torvald is even less known, less accessible, than when the
play began.
Goldman concludes by celebrating Nora’s decision to leave and remarks
that a “true bond” must be “free from the bondage of duty.” Although Goldman
is clearly echoing Nora’s own claims about how Torvald perhaps needs to lose his
doll for there to be any hope of a future relationship, Goldman’s statement might
also be read as a critique of the typical family unit. Critics like Strindberg have
read Nora’s departure as an abandonment of her children and proof that she was
and would be a poor mother. Goldman, on the other hand, implies here that a
“true bond” might not require the traditional trappings of marriage and child-
rearing — surely an even bolder claim in 1914 than it might be today. Her use of
the term bondage seems to suggest that dependency of any kind, including wed-
lock and motherhood, results in a form of servitude.
In this excerpt from her article “The Doll House Backlash: Criticism,
Feminism, and Ibsen,” literary scholar Joan Templeton argues that much of the
criticism around Henrik Ibsen’s play functions to make it “a safe classic.” It does
so by rendering Nora, easily the more controversial character, as irrational,
immoral, unwomanly, merely comic, and so on, and thus “inconsequential.”
Weigand’s extended quote provides a key example of this position, for he remarks
that Nora’s characterization in the play gives her a “fundamentally comic
appeal.” Although there is a certain silliness to her, however, it may be difficult
for other readers to see Nora’s blackmail and subsequent revelations about her-
self and her marriage as merely humorous. As Ibsen’s memorandum notes,
women’s roles in society are severely constrained by their position relative to
men. Given that acknowledgment, should we imagine this to be an issue Ibsen
would want to make comic? If Nora, Templeton argues, is widely recognized as
unworthy of serious regard, critics are then able to position Ibsen as not some
feminist sympathizer. The play’s inclusion in this collection suggests that, while
obviously part of the literary canon, it remains important as a catalyst for contin-
ued discussion about human relationships, social convention, and power struc-
tures. Readers can, even in the twenty- first century, ponder whether Nora is a
sympathetic and even heroic figure or whether she is immoral and dishonest.
In her more recent article on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, critic Susanna
Rustin comments on the three UK productions in theaters and argues that the
play is more relevant now than ever. One of its most radical features, she asserts,
is that it “presents a woman’s dilemma as a human dilemma.” Nora’s quest for
self- fulfillment in the midst of a host of other commitments is relevant to people
of both sexes and even across time. The role of “Nora” is, for some actresses, a
career maker. Ruskin suggests that the ability to make supposedly female con-
cerns of interest to everyone is no small feat; we are often drawn to male
162 Freedom and Confinement
protagonists, with women typically playing supporting roles. This doesn’t mean
that there are no leading ladies, of course — only that Ibsen’s play seems to speak
to a wide variety of people in ways that not every play can. Ruskin cites the 80/20
rule as evidence that men often make up a larger part of a cast than women.
When thinking about which genders are most represented in popular films,
plays, and TV shows, readers might also consider what kinds of roles women
play. Are they and their concerns central? Do women have relationships with
one another, or are they typically oriented about men? What representations do
we have for women leaving their families? Ultimately, Ruskin asks us to consider
where Nora is going once she’s closed the door behind her.
Chapter12
Crime and Justice (p.865)
DISCOVERING INJUSTICE: STORIES (p.867)
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Young Goodman Brown (p.867)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” invariably raises issues of
historical and biographical context and intertextual relationships with other
treatments of the Puritan struggle against perceived manifestations of sin and
evil. Students may have read Hawthorne’s frequently anthologized story in high
school and perhaps have read his novel The Scarlet Letter, itself a famous text
dealing with the issue of outsiders. Arthur Miller’s drama The Crucible, a retell-
ing of the Salem witch trials, also appears on high school reading lists. Less
familiar, but recommended to students interested in an alternate fictional view,
is I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by the Caribbean writer Maryse Condé. This
novel tells the story of the Salem witch trials from the perspective of the
Barbadian cook whose stories and Afro- Caribbean lore may have interacted with
Puritan credulity about evil to fascinate a group of young girls into hysteria.
Colorful and imaginative in the midst of the mostly humorless and somber
members of the Salem congregation, Tituba, a black servant, was the first person
blamed for the strange behavior of the bewitched girls. Sarah Good, a woman
whose behavior and appearance may sound to current readers like a description
of a “street person” — annoying respectable people with her smelly pipe, her
pleas for food, and her neglect of her children — was accused soon after Tituba.
Those claiming to be tormented also pointed out Sarah Osburne, a woman who
was known to have lived with her husband for several months before their mar-
riage. Each of these women was an easy target, since each was in some way an
outsider, a transgressor against the accepted views of proper demeanor and
behavior for a woman. Most readers will know the story of how the hysteria
spread and how, to use the words of the seventeenth- century Boston preacher
Cotton Mather, “some of the Witch Gang . . . [were] . . . Fairly Executed.”
Ironically, Mather’s study of the matter may have stopped the hysteria, since he
argued against the use of “spectral evidence” in which victims claimed to see
various members of the community behaving like witches. Since he maintained
that evil spirits can take any shape, claims to have seen a neighbor in a manifesta-
tion of evil were not proof.
Hawthorne uses these ideas and others about witches in “Young Goodman
Brown.” Writing in the 1830s, long after the 1692 trials, Hawthorne knew the
history well, since his family had been intimately involved with the prosecu-
tions. In the generation preceding the witch trials, Hawthorne’s ancestor had
164 Crime and Justice
become known for fighting heresy, forcing a Quaker woman to be whipped out
of town. Students can read about this in Hawthorne’s autobiographical preface
to The Scarlet Letter called “The Custom- House” or in various biographies and
critical studies of the author’s life and work. As James Joyce would later do with
Dublin, Hawthorne found himself inextricably bound to writing about Salem,
even though he was happiest elsewhere. Hawthorne takes his witch lore from
both oral and written sources, including official Puritan doctrine such as
Mather’s. Mather mentions the “multitude and quality” of the accused and
speaks of a woman “who had received the devil’s promise to be queen of hell,”
words Hawthorne uses in his story. Names of his characters come from actual
people who were brought to trial; for example, Goody Cloyse and Goody Cory
both appear in the historical record. Hawthorne’s ancestor John Hathorne inter-
rogated Goody Cory. The recipe for witch ointment was published — one hopes
as a joke — in a popular magazine Hawthorne was connected with, but it is
interesting that brave souls who have tested a mixture of smallage (hemlock)
and wolfsbane (aconite) say that it produces a sensation of flying. The inclusion
of the “fat of a new- born babe” perpetuates a common belief about witches as
baby killers, a story still heard today. There are also hints that Young Goodman
Brown has made an agreement with the devil before the story begins, another
motif that we recognize from multiple adaptations of the Faust legend and other
sources.
In allegory, abstract ideas are represented as people, objects, places, and so
forth that play symbolic roles. Hawthorne read John Bunyan’s early Puritan alle-
gory Pilgrim’s Progress many times, and he also enjoyed the long allegorical
poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. He employs the genre in a less
ambitious way than the writers of these classics of English literature, but
Hawthorne’s narrative does have many qualities of allegory. Names are most
obviously symbolic. The narrator refers to the protagonist always as “Goodman,”
and the implication is that he represents the quality of goodness, as Bunyan’s
“Everyman” stands for the ordinary human being. We may need to point out to
students that “Goodman” is the character’s title, similar to Mr., rather than his
name. “Goody” is short for Goodwife. But ironically, the people who seem to be
good are revealed in Young Goodman Brown’s nightmare — or his actual experi-
ence — to be evil. The good man of the story is actually a hypocrite who goes out
for a night of adventure or in response to a bargain made earlier. He goes on an
evil quest, unlike Bunyan’s hero, who perseveres toward salvation. The Puritan
husband expects that he may leave his good wife alone long enough to indulge
in evil this one night and then return to the “arms of Faith.” His wife’s name is
equally symbolic. In fact, readers may find that the double meaning as he cries
“My Faith is gone” lays it on a bit too thick. He ultimately finds a vision of evil
that causes his alienation from all goodness and joy, and the report of his funeral
indicates that he goes on to eternal damnation.
