These two stories written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving respectively demonstrate diverse examples of men rambling away from their homes for fairly different intentions, with somewhat the same results, of course except for the general consequences upon the men. Intense analysis of both stories discloses both the differences and the similarities between the two and how the two things are significant to the whole story.
Young Goodman gives an overview of the life of a man after straying into the woods to finish an unknown errand at midnight. He gets to his destination, which looks like a ritual where him and his wife are to be initiated into a witches coven following the witch trials which had occurred in that town in the previous 150 years. In this story, we see a man who may have felt to be aware of the scenes he participated in, but he, however, loses his entire faith in his previous teachings hence his marriage and faith in Christianity fall apart. Given that Hawthorne writes about the insincerity of the Puritan system, he may have used the story to criticize the foundation of the Puritans’ lifestyle
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In the story of Rip Van Winkle, a man wanders into the mountains as a way of escaping his nagging woman. He meets men conveying moonshine up the mount and joins them in drinking whereby he falls asleep only to wake up 20years after the incidence of the American Revolution. Upon returning home, nobody except the daughter identifies him; hence the story passes the message that when one fails to work hard, the loss their life and become unidentifiable in the society.
These stories have similarities, but their implicated meanings differ. Both show a man straying away from home for some period to complete unknown errands. However, there is a difference in that Goodman loses faith in humanity and life and becomes miserable whereas Winkle remains a lazy man like before. Generally, one can say these stories are way diverse than similar given that despite the similarities at the start, the plots take several directions and end up telling unique stories.
