Compare And Contrast Young Goodman Brown And Good Country People

Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.
To begin with, the country and city surroundings in “Good Country People” and “Everyday Use” shaped psychological and moral traits of the characters in each piece of writing. Both Joy/Hulga from “Good Country People” and Dee/Wangero from “Everyday Use” value intellect because they both studied in a city. Since both girls grew up in a country setting, they treat those who don't value intellect or those who are not intelligent by their standards as lesser and are quite nasty to them.

Joy would look “at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity” and snort at some of her mother’s comments, while Dee would shove her family away at any moment, like dimwits, and read to them, forcing words on them like they were ignorant (O’Connor 18). Joy and Dee both were somewhat naïve, even with their city education. Joy was easily tricked by Manley Pointer into giving up her leg, and Dee had no idea where her name actually came from or what her heritage could mean to her family. Another comparison between Joy and Dee is that they both believe what they want can be had. Joy wanted to be loved, and she believed she could have that through Manley though it didn’t work out on her in the long run, considering Manley ran off with her prosthetic leg. Dee believes she can have anything she wants that she considers her heritage, but this doesn’t work out for her in the long run as well. In the end, her mother says no to her taking the quilts. Though Joy and Dee were alike with their city education and their adamance, the girls were very different in the fact that Joy absolutely despised her home and made it clear that if not for her heart condition, she’d be teaching classes in a city college instead of living in her simple country house. Dee, however, came back from her city education for a visit and appeared to love how simple everything was- from the house to her family and heritage, she found it endearing.
Furthermore, ‘insiders’, or those who were within the character’s respective communities, in “Good Country People” and “Young Goodman Brown”, were treated better than those who were considered ‘outsiders’.

Mrs. Hopewell, in the former of the two stories, called anyone she considered simple or moral ‘good country people’ or salt of the earth, meaning basic, fundamental goodness. She considered anyone under these definitions, which was anyone who grew up in the country like herself, to be hard to find and “that if, in this day and age, you get good country people, you had better hang onto them” (O’Connor, 11). Anyone who did not fit into these definitions, however, Mrs. Hopewell called trash and considered them below her. Young Goodman Brown in the latter of the two works of literary merit, was a lot like Mrs. Hopewell in the sense that he considered the ‘outsiders’, or Indians in his case, to be devilish and below his Puritan lifestyle. Living in the small community they lived in, as well, established a system of faith in Mrs. Hopewell and Young Goodman Brown. Mrs. Hopewell, living where she did, inherently adopted a Christian faith, and Young Goodman Brown established a Puritan faith from his Puritan settlement. Not only were Mrs. Hopewell and Young Goodman Brown in their respective stories alike, Mrs. Freeman, from “Good Country People”, and Young Goodman Brown knew at the end of their stories something wasn’t as it appeared. Mrs. Freeman knew “some can’t be that simple”

referring to Manley Pointer’s act of simple Bible salesperson, which she was right. Manley had only been pretending so he could obtain Joy’s prosthetic leg. Young Goodman Brown, at the end of his story as well, knew that his so-called Puritan community wasn’t as pure as they appeared in the sunlight. After viewing the witch/cult meeting in the forest that the Devil himself had supposedly attended, Young Goodman Brown went through the rest of his life “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man” after realizing either his community wasn’t as they seemed, or their meeting in the forest wasn’t as it seemed (Hawthorne, 72).
Likewise, in “Young Goodman Brown” and “Everyday Use” the characters developed psychological and moral traits from their physical surroundings.

Young Goodman Brown and The Mother in the latter piece of writing consider some of the other characters in their respective stories to have an alien-like appearance or personality because it differs from what they are used to. Young Goodman Brown views the Indians as strange and foreign because of the Indian’s habit of living in the untamed forest, which was designated evil by the Young Goodman Brown’s Puritan community. The Mother views her daughter and maybe-husband Asalamalakim as alien-like because of their hard to pronounce names based off of their ancestral roots and because of their new, weird habits such as “when Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he [didn’t] know how people [shook] hands” according to The Mother (Walker 23). The habits of the Indians, Dee/Wangero, and Asalamalakim are strange and foreign to Young Goodman Brown and The Mother correspondingly, therefore making the former characters seem alien-like. Furthermore, Young Goodman Brown treats his Puritan community with respect, and appropriately so because he believes in righteous Puritan settlement. At the end of the story and his life, however, he views his community with contempt and even distrust or hatefulness in hindsight of the spectacle in the woods. Dee, howbeit, viewed her home, family, and community with contempt at the

beginning of her life because of the small house in the country that she grew up, and as the story progresses, Dee treats her family with a backwards type of respect. Dee just covets anything she sees as her ‘heritage’, like the quilts that belonged to her younger sister, but treats her mother’s new house, that resembles the one she hated as a child, and simple ways with love and respect.
Overall,