The Problem of Corruption and Its Different Sides

Corruption happens every day, amongst a wide area of things, not just things that we know of but
much deeper things such as governmental issues, some of Americas biggest wars, corruption within
our tax dollars that we pay out, and many more secret things the government wouldn’t dream of
telling us because they know that would cause complete havoc and chaos. How much do we really
know is the real question, what goes on behind the doors of the most prestigious places? Now let’s
see some sides of corruption and how it works.

To begin with, Corruption in wars has been going on for centuries but one of the most memorable had
to of been the World War I. Not only did we lose many people but we invested so many American
dollars into it, about 52 million to be exact. Hard earned money from every day working Americans all
over a war, that is not a pleasant nor fair thing in the least bit. Where was the money going you may
ask well for example “Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war
earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year.” (General Smedley
Butler). That was just an amount of money spent for actual necessities for the soldiers but who really
pays for most of the cost you may ask well it is the opposite of what you thought, it’s not you but it is
the American solider. “But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the
American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad.” Who would’ve thought that the person who is
fighting for our country is paying the most out of all of us? Not what you were expecting right?

Second of all, in the story “Young Goodman brown” there is a very big idea of corruption in the story
which is one of the main themes the reader tends to notice. Typical “puritan morals” are kind of
voided out and put out on the table within this story. Goodman brown was always so worried with how
people viewed him, what they thought about him, and his reputation so when he really had to face his
demons it was very hard for him because the reader thinks he felt ignorant for not understanding what
was happening since the beginning, he didn’t realize his whole “Puritan” family was beyond corrupted
and he was slowly turning into one of them. The reader does not know if he followed in their footsteps
because he’s just a follower or If he followed them because it felt morally correct but personally if it
was an average normal person they would have just gone down their own path and completely left
everyone behind in the dust and became a better person instead of becoming a worse person.
Goodman Brown meeting the devil may have been “real or fake” but does it really even matter
because no matter what it shows there are evil ways stored in his mind and corrupted people who
closely surround him. It took a lot of confidence for Goodman Brown to walk in the forest in the first
place because he always said nothing good ever happened in there so it goes to show he is a strong-
willed person even though it may seem that he is doing the absolutely most wrong and corrupted
thing possible (walking in the woods).

Lastly, you may be thinking how a short story and a world issue that is still happening today have
something in common, well they do, they are just laid out in different ways but overall they are both
filled with corruption. Corruption with the war had to do with our tax dollars and why Americans were
investing so much into the war without an actual clue of where it all was going and corruption within
the story had to with a very deceiving family that looked perfect from the outside but very sick and
twisted on the inside. In the story, it quoted “But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and
shrank not from its other horrors.” (Hawthorne). Which pretty much means out of all the corrupt things
going on around him he was continually the center of it, the devil, himself. That quote really opened
the reader up to what was actually going on.

After Goodman Brown has his experience from the night before he seems to return back to “town” as
if nothing ever even happened, he does not speak of it but it’s a constant thought in his mind because
no person could so easily forget about something like that and it states how he walked through the
town as “The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village
staring around him like a bewildered man”. Now the war was a bit different from the story obviously
but both were as corrupt just in different ways.

In conclusion, Corruption is corruption no matter which way you say it, what the source of it is, or the
size of the actual issue that is occurring. The reader compared real life government war corruption to
an old short story written ages ago and at the end of the day both of the situations were corrupted,
obviously corruption happening inside a famous American war is a bigger deal than a story they both
prove many points and bring out many truths behind a lot. The corruption in the short story was based
around facing your demons and realize what’s happening to you and the war corruption was based on
the fact that the World War costed American tax payers 52 million dollars over time.

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