Young Goodman Brown and M.

Night Shyamalans The Village:

the Fear of the Unknown.

Daniel McDill
English Composition II
112/6/2016

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Young Goodman Brown and M. Night Shyamalans The Village:
the Fear of the Unknown.
The posthumously acclaimed author H. P. Lovecraft once wrote that The oldest and
strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the
unknown.1 Lovecraft and many other authors throughout the history of literature have used fear
as a gateway to deepest parts of the human mind, both morally and socially. Two such authors
are American novelist and short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of Young Goodman
Brown and screenwriter and director M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote and directed the 2004
film The Village.
While both works use fear, it is how they use it that is interesting. Hawthorne wrote his
short story in 1835 about a young man from puritan Salem in the 17th century. The young man,
the Young Goodman Brown, leaves his wife Faith and ventures into the wooded wilderness
surrounding the town. In the wilderness he has a lengthy conversation with Satan himself, and
eventually sees, or dreams, that the entire village is taking part in a Satanic ritual, even his
beloved Faith. Shyamalans screenplay also takes place in what is apparently an early American
village. The village is surrounded by woods and villagers live in fear of strange creatures that
live in the woods. While the story appears to be set in the 19th century, the ending of the movie
reveals that the events take place in modern day. While both works of literature use similar
setting and plot devices, Hawthorn uses them to explore an individuals fear as it relates to
morality, and Shyamalan uses them to examine the use of fear in the social and political realms.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (Booklassic, Jun 17, 2015), 1.

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The theme of a wild and dangerous wood encompassing a civilized village runs deep
through both works, and represents the fear of the unknown. In Young Goodman Brown the
woods represent a testing of the heros moral character. Goodman Brown is an everyman
character, representing all those who are striving to live a good life, and his journey into the
unknown represents a moral testing. The many unknowns in his life are represented by the
woods, which are a murky, dream-like realm where evil that lurks around every corner.2
In The Village, the townsfolk live in fear of the forest the surrounds them. The forest is
forbidden, and as the school teacher and town elder Edward Walker tells his pupils, We do not
go into their woods, they do not come into our valley, referring to Those We Don't Speak Of,
which are terrifying creatures in red robes that live in the woods.3 Of those living in the village,
only the elders have ever been through the woods and into the towns on the other side. The edge
of the village is referred to as the border and is sectioned off by burning torches all around the
edge of the forest.4 The woods in the The Village serve as an edge to what is socially
acceptable, as the woods are forbidden, and Those We Dont Speak Of serve as the retribution
for stepping outside of the bounds of what is socially allowed. This point is brought home by the
first revelation in the film. Those We Dont Speak Of are in fact the village elders dressed in
suits in order to maintain justice within the village. The fear of the villagers fuels their adherence
to the rules of their society, and the elders of the village leverage that fear.

Matt Lorenz, The Meaning of a Life in the Wilderness: Wordsworth, Hawthorne, Miller, The Arthur
Miller Journal 7, no. 1/2 (2012): 71.
2

M. Night Shyamalan, The Village, The Internet Movie Script Database, Accessed November 1, 2016,
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Village,-The.html.
4

Ibid.

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However, in Hawthornes story, it is not the fear of the forbidden that plagues the young
protagonist. While the devil tries to implicate the leaders of Salem in order to ruin the faith of
Young Goodman Brown, this does not affect his moral resolve. However, the young man retorts
that, I have nothing to do with the governor or council; they have their own ways, and are no
rule for a simple husband like me.5 The hypocrisy of the town leaders is not enough to break his
moral character. Instead, his morality is inherently tied to his trust in the innocence of his wife,
who symbolizes his personal faith. However, when Goodman Brown finds the pink ribbons in
the woods, the same ribbons his Faith was wearing as he left, he begins to falter. My Faith is
gone! cried he, after one stupefied moment. There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name.6
In defeat Brown confesses, Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.7 In the
confession he gives into the devil's argument, which is that virtue and piety do not exist.8
Goodman Brown does not need to bow down to the devil in servitude because the devil has
converted him, not to evil, but to cynicism, which is the result of his journey from innocence.
While the political lie does not affect Goodman Brown, his personal relationship with Faith, both
as his wife and as the allegorical representation of his internal faith, is what drives him to do
good. When he finds that his faith is counterfeit, he gives up on his moral uprightness. By losing
his innocence, he ruins his relationship with faith. He often shrank from the bosom of Faith,

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown, in Mosses from an Old Manse, (Houghton, Mifflin,
1900), 107.
5

Ibid., 115.

Ibid.

D. M. McKeithan, Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown: An Interpretation. Modern Language Notes

67, no. 2, 96
8

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and would gaze sternly at his wife.9 A key point in Hawthornes story is that it is not his
knowledge of any hypocrisy in the village that causes Goodman Browns cynicism. Instead, it
his fear that their could be evil and hypocrisy that is crippling. Hawthorne shows this to
accentuate the way fear of impurity can be debilitating to those who are trying to live moral
lives.
Goodman Brown exclaims that, There may be a devilish Indian around every corner!
10

The young man also twice is afraid of stumbling upon an evil powwow and being attacked.

The idea of a fiendish native haunting the woods has a long history as a narrative used by
English settlers to reinforce their concept of moral superiority, the kind of moral superiority that
Goodman Brown assumed of himself.11 However, Hawthorne turns this trope of the fiendish
indian in the woods. Goodman brown finds that the true fiends lurking in the woods are the
townspeople, the same ones who would typically believe that they were morally superior. By
setting the town during a time of puritanism Hawthorne accents the impurity and the evil
inherent within humanity. By highlighting the impurity of the puritan village, Hawthornes
wilderness serves not as something other or unknown as it originally apears, but as a symbol for
the inner part of the puritan village that is not visible through the facade, and by extension the
inner parts of humanity.
Similarly, in The Village Those We Dont Speak Of are an example of the duality that
exists within a society. The creatures are a lawful evil, acting as the agents of justice in the town.

358-59.

Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown, 124.

10

Ibid., 104.

11

Lauren Coats, et al., Those We Don't Speak Of: Indians in The Village, PMLA 123, no. 2 (2008):

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They are attracted to the color of blood. After stabbing Ivys fiancee out of jealousy, the mentally
disabled Noahs parents see blood all over his hands and clothes. Knowingly, he exclaims
Bad color. Bad color! Bad color!12 By spreading the idea that Those We Don't Speak Of are
attracted to the color red the elders of the village are effectively trying to guard against violence
and the spilling of blood. This myth reinforces the role of Those We Don't Speak Of as avengers,
while at the same time saving the elders from having that role associated with them in the public
eye. This dual role of the elders as benevolent guides as well as horrific avengers parallels real
world government. Shyamalan is raising the issue of using fear and lies in order to achieve a
better society. However, his film answers this issue positively. At the end of the film Edward
Walker tells the other elders that they chance to continue this place. If that is something... we
still wish for.13
By standing with Edward Walker, the other elders affirm that they plan to keep up the
deception. Many critics believe the deception in The Village parallels the U.S. involvement in
the middle east, and the creatures parallel the characterization of muslims as violent enemies.14
However, Shyamalans pseudo-horror has a mucher wider scope than this criticism of modern
American culture and politics. By drawing on American Colonial themes, he expands the
conversation to American history as a whole.15 Edward Walker, the unofficial leader of the
village, was a professor of American History at at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was he

12

Shyamalan, The Village.

13

Ibid.

14

Patrick C. Collier, Our Silly Lies: Ideological Fictions in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village,
Journal of Narrative Theory 38, no. 2 (2008): 285.
15

Lauren Coats, et al., Those We Don't Speak Of: Indians in The Village, 363.

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who was the driving force behind the creation of the village. Effectively, Shyamalan joins the
same conversation that Hawthorne spoke into in Young Goodman Brown, specifically, the
conversation about the faults of American culture as a historical whole. Though Goodman
Brown is ultimately disenfranchised with the purity of his town, in The Village, Ivy, whos
blind trust in her father parallels her physical blindness, continues to believe in the village and its
elders. Her trust in the elders continues in spite of her going outside of the village and seeing
beyond the lie surrounding the village. She serves as a parallel to Faith in Young Goodman
Brown. Rather than being a counterfeit, her faith in the village is earnest. Ultimately it is she
who saves the villagers way of life, and it is implied that she will keep the secret of the village
when, in the last scene of the film, she says to her fiancee, I'm back, Lucius, indicating that
even though she left the village, she is not going to make an attempt to leave again.
Shyamalan ends on a more hopeful note than Hawthorne. However, both authors critique
American culture and its relationship to fear. While Shyamalan presents how fear affects a
community, Hawthorne uses Young Goodman Brown as an example of how fear affects an
individual within the community. Though they wrote over one hundred and fifty years apart,
these authors focus on similar themes in order to communicate their ideas. In both works there is
a revelation concerning the protagonists community. The difference between the two texts is the
character's reaction to the revelation they experience. While Young Goodman Brown is
disillusioned with the purity of his community, Ivy maintains faith in the benevolence of the
authority of the elders in her village. As both works consider the effects of fear surrounding one's
community, the issues they raise are far from resolved. In modern times there is possibly more
fear in the political sphere then ever before. Americans are more afraid than they have ever been,

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and politicians are playing into and leveraging that fear.16 In addition, religious disillusionment
continues to rise.17 With all of this fear in the world, literature and films can be cathartic
experiences and help to dispel fear.

Molly Ball, Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear, The Atlantic, September 2, 2016, accessed
November 16, 2016,
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-fear/498116/.
16

Ryan Sheehan, 3500 People Leave the Church Every Day, The Christian Post, May 27, 2015, accessed
November 16, 2016, http://www.christianpost.com/news/3500-people-leave-the-church-every-day-139631/.
17

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Works Cited
Ball, Molly. Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear. The Atlantic, September 2, 2016.
Accessed November 16, 2016.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of
-fear/498116/.
Coats, Lauren, Matt Cohen, John David Miles, Kinohi Nishikawa, and Rebecca Walsh. Those
We Don't Speak Of: Indians in The Village PMLA 123, no. 2 (2008): 358-74.
Collier, Patrick C. Our Silly Lies: Ideological Fictions in M. Night Shyamalan's The
Village, Journal of Narrative Theory 38, no. 2 (2008): 269-92.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown. In Mosses from an Old Manse, 102-124.
Houghton, Mifflin, 1900.
Lane, Anthony. 2004. "Village People." New Yorker 80, no. 23: 90-91. Academic Search
Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 14, 2016).
Lorenz, Matt. ""The Meaning of a Life in the Wilderness": Wordsworth, Hawthorne, Miller."
The Arthur Miller Journal 7, no. 1/2 (2012): 63-77.
McKeithan, D. M. "Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown": An Interpretation." Modern
Language Notes 67, no. 2: 93-96
Sheehan, Ryan. 3500 People Leave the Church Every Day. The Christian Post, May 27, 2015.
Accessed November 16, 2016,
http://www.christianpost.com/news/3500-people-leave-the-church-every-day-139631.
Shyamalan, M. Night. The Village. The Internet Movie Script Database. Accessed November
1, 2016. http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Village,-The.html.