What is the moral or the lesson that we can take from "Young Goodman Brown"?

makes
it pretty clear what his story "" is intended to illustrate. Everybody has a dark and
evil side to his or her nature. Robert Louis Stevenson was doing the same thing in a more
restrained way in his famous story "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." In "Young Goodman
Brown," the hero is planning to attend a devil-worshipping ceremony out in the forest. He
says goodbye to his innocent little wife Faith and admonishes her to remain safe inside their
home until he returns.

Then God bless you! said Faith,
with the pink ribbons; And may you find all well when you come back.

Amen! cried Goodman Brown. Say thy prayers,
dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.

Goodman Brown is accompanied on his journey by the devil, and when Brown gets to the
scene of the ceremony he recognizes many of the most righteous members of his community in
attendance. What is especially unnerving is that he sees his own wife Faith in the midst of the
devil-worshippers. 

Hawthorne softens his story by suggesting that it might,
after all, have only been a dream.

Had Goodman Brown
fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?

Be it so if you will; but, alas! It was a dream
of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not
a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream. 

One of Guy de Maupassant's lesser-known stories is titled "Was
It A Dream?" Maupassant was a younger man than Hawthorne. The French writer's story
resembles "Young Goodman Brown" so closely that it seems likely he used Hawthorne's as
a model. In "Was It A Dream?" the narrator spends the night in a cemetery mourning the
death of his mistress who was just buried there that day. In the middle of the night he sees the
graves opening and the occupants emerging in order to revise the words on their own tombstones.
For example, one of them reads:

"Here lies
Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He loved his family, was kind and honorable,
and died in the grace of the Lord."

The
ghost of Jacques Olivant takes a stone and scratches out his epitaph. Then he writes in luminous
letters with the tip of his forefinger:

"Here reposes Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He
hastened his father's death by his unkindness, as he wished to inherit his fortune, he tortured
his wife, tormented his children, deceived his neighbors, robbed everyone he could, and died
wretched."

The narrator sees that all the
ghosts from all the other open graves are doing the same thing. They are replacing the false
epitaphs with the truth. 

"And I saw that all had
been tormentors of their neighbors--malicious, dishonest, hypocrites, liars, rogues,
calumniators, envious; that they had stolen, deceived, performed every disgraceful, every
abdominal action...and they were all writing at the same time, on the threshold of their eternal
abode, the truth, the terrible and the holy truth which everybody is ignorant of, or pretends to
be ignorant of, while the others are alive."

Finally
the narrator recognizes the ghost of his own beloved mistress who has just been buried here. He
sees that she has replaced her epitaph which read: 'She loved, was loved, and died.' 

"I now saw: 'Having gone out one day, in order to deceive her
lover, she caught cold in the rain and died.'"

Maupassant titles his story "Was It A Dream?" So it is not necessary for him
to end it with that question. Like Hawthorne, Maupassant obviously means his story to be taken
literally. Both Young Goodman Brown and Maupassant's anonymous narrator have to question whether
they only had bad dreams because they find it impossible to believe that what they saw
represented the real truth about human nature. We all have wicked sides, and we are all hiding
them from the world. Everyone else is hiding his or her wicked side from us! 

Robert Louis Stevenson was dealing with the same basic idea in his famous story
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Hawthorne also deals with it in "." That black
veil reminds everyone in Reverend Hooper's parish that they are hiding their secret sinful
selves from the world.

What is the author's purpose in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?

Irving is
part of an early generation of American writers establishing what we might call an American
mythology asserting US cultural superiority over Europe. His purpose is to show the fresh,
energetic spirit of the United States defeating the effete, nervous spirit of the
European.

Ichabod Crane represents the European mindset: he is thin and
effeminate and wants to marry his way to wealth. He is tied to the books and traditions of the
past, including a belief in superstitions.

Brom Bones, in contrast, is a red
blooded all-American he-man. He hangs out with the guysunlike Crane, who surrounds himself with
womenand the reader won't find the muscular Brom reading a book. He represents the vigor, the
wit, the ingenuity, and the pragmatism of the new country. He is hardworking and
forward-lookingand he wins the girl and the day.

All of this represents the
fresh new American spirit winning the day, which beyond writing an entertaining story, is the
message Irving hopes to convey.

What was Karl Marx's belief about the role of religion in a society?

Marx was
not a particular zealous advocate of religion.  He argued that religion was a condition that
impeded a critical view of existing structures that enveloped individuals.  For Marx, religion
was a a force that prevented individuals from recognizing the true essence of their being in
material reality.

Marx objected to religion occupying a significant role in
society because it precluded the full understanding of dialectical materialism.  In borrowing
from his teacher, Hegel, Marx suggested that the transcendent condition in being in the world
was the dialectical process, and...

href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people

Who are the most important poets of World War I?

A number
of influential English poets sprang from the years of the Great War. Unfortunately, many of
their voices had been silenced by death before the war's end. Notable British poets who offered
their perspectives on the war and/or influenced later poets include Rupert Brooke, Siegfried
Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and T. E. Hulme.

Of these, Rupert Brooke was the one
whose poetry reflected the nationalism and patriotism that characterized the young British men
at the beginning of the war. Winston Churchill honored him by saying,

Why is there so much of the earths surface at or near sea-level?

According to the hypsometric curve (plot between elevation and % of earth's surface), only about
29% of Earth's surface is above the mean sea level, rest 71% has an elevation less than mean sea
level. There are a number of reasons for this observation. Erosion of land mass by water, wind
and other forces reduces the elevation of continental features. The...

href="https://serc.carleton.edu/mathyouneed/hypsometric/index.html">https://serc.carleton.edu/mathyouneed/hypsometric/index.html

What were the problems caused by the Tariff of 1828, otherwise known as the Tariff of Abominations?

larrygates

The Tariff of 1828 (Tariff of Abominations) had been passed by Congress to protect
Northern industry; but was damaging to Southern states whose economy was primarily agricultural.
Southern statesmen, primarily John C. Calhoun, argued that Congress did not have the power to
pass a tariff for protection; but could only do so for revenue purposes. Southerners also feared
that if the Tariff were allowed to stand, the next debate would be over the abolition of
slavery, which was vital to the Southern economy.

It was
in response to the Tariff of 1828 that Calhoun anonymously published his South
Carolinaand Protest which said the individual states could by called convention
declare acts of Congress null and void...

href="http://www.historydoctor.net/Advanced%20Placement%20United%20States%20History/Age%20of%20Jackson%20Notes.htm">http://www.historydoctor.net/Advanced%20Placement%20Unite...
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_1828">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_1828]]>

What is a detailed analysis of Elizabeth Jennings' poem "Reminiscence" in terms of summary, language, tone, imagery, and themes?

As the
title indicates, in this poem, Jennings remembers her childhood. She contrasts her childhood
state of mind with her adult state. As a child she lived without analyzing her world too deeply
and that was a happier state for her. Then she did not "fret at thought" (in other
words, worry) or try to figure everything out: she simply lived and did not try to "whittle
a pattern" (make sense of everything). Adult thinking causes her anxiety, making her
sometimes "numb with fear." She looks...