In the novel Anthem, Ayn Rand writes about the future dark ages. Anthem takes place in city of a technologically backwards totalitarian society, where mankind is born in the home of the infants and dies in the home of the useless. Just imagine, being born in to a life of slavery having no freedom, no way of self expression, no ego.
The city represented slavery. When in the city, Equality had been guilty of many transgressions. He was not like his brothers, he was different he was smarter, healthier, and stronger. At the age of five he advanced to home of the student, where he got scolded for learning faster then his brothers. Equality teachers told him that he had evil in his bones because he was taller then his brothers. Then at the age of fifteen when the house of vocations came Equality was guilty of the great transgression of preference because he wanted to be a scholar, but his selected vocation was to be a street sweeper. Every day while he swept by the fields he would watch and smile at Liberty and she would smile back. Liberty was a woman that worked in the home of the peasants. Making contact with a woman was prohibited but for when in the palace of the mating. The palace of the mating was where people were forced to breed. Equality thought touching a woman was shameful and ugly. Th! en one day while he swept the streets he found a grate that led to underground tunnel full of things from the unmentionable times. For two years he went to the tunnel and discovered a new glowing light. Then one day while in the tunnel decided that he must share his secret with his brothers. He decided that he would bring his secret in front of the world council meeting. When Equality entered the world council meeting the scholars got frightened and angry. They demanded that he tell them why he was there. He connected the wires and they glowed, the scholars backed up against the wall as they stared in horror. They told him that he they were going to punish for breaking so many laws. Equality trembled in fright he quickly grabbed the light and ran to the uncharted forest. No man followed because they feared the unknown.
Posthumous Rating of Hawthorne and “Young Goodman Brown”
Posthumous Rating of Hawthorne and “Young Goodman Brown”
This essay intends to trace the main literary criticism of the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “Young Goodman Brown”since the author’s death in 1864.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s acclamation as a great writer by both critics and the general public was not an overnight occurrence. The Norton Anthology: American Literature states that “he was agonizingly slow in winning acclaim” (547).
Initially, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s literary works went unranked among those of other American and British writers. But his reputation grew gradually even among contemporary critics, until he was recognized as a “man of genius.” The question in this essay is this: How does he and “Young Goodman Brown” fare since 1864 when Hawthorne died.
The poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote a poem commemorating Hawthorne for the funeral in 1864:
. . . . There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.
Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clew regain?
The unfinished windows in Aladdin’s tower
Unfinished must remain!
In 1871 James T. Fields published Yesterdays With Authors, in which Chapter 3 deals with his evaluation of Nathaniel Hawthorne:
I AM sitting to-day opposite the likeness of the rarest genius America has given to literature,–a man who lately sojourned in this busy world of ours, but during many years of his life
“Wandered lonely as a cloud,”–
a man who had, so to speak, a physical affinity with solitude. The writings of this author have never soiled the public mind with one unlovely image. His men and women have a magic of their own, and we shall wait a long
time before another arises among us to take his place. Indeed, it seems probable no one will ever walk precisely the same round of fiction which he traversed with so free and firm a step.
What lovely thoughts! What a tribute to Hawthorne’s genius! The very next year Henry James wrote a review of Hawthorne for the Nation:
Our remarks are not provoked by any visible detriment conferred on Mr. Hawthorne’s fame by these recent publications. . .His journals throw but little light on his personal feelings, and even less on his genius per se.