Young Goodman Brown and Rip Van Winkle both tell stories of family men, of which each starts their story as one person and becomes completely different by the end of it. The two stories are written in different narrations and settings; however, they have something in common. While it may seem that there are more differences, the stories have some similar aspects in the development of the events.
The first similarity told in the stories is that both Goodman Brown and Rip Van Winkle are married family men. Both stories revolve around the moments in the main characters’ lives where they leave their wives and go on journeys in the woods. At some points in their journeys, both men encounter groups of people engaged in some unusual activities. Participating in those activities, Goodman Brown and Rip Van Winkle fall asleep and find themselves the next morning, unsure if the last nights’ events were real. As they walk through their villages the next day and proceed with their lives, it becomes obvious that both men have changed and no longer are the same as before.
The differences in the stories are shown in the details and the purposes of the men’s journeys. Goodman Brown’s story begins as he leaves his “sweet, pretty wife” Faith, with whom he has been married for three months, to go on a journey with some “evil purpose” (Levine, 2017). On the other hand, Rip Van Winkle is blessed with a “termagant wife” and “ragged and wild” children from whom he can escape only by “strolling away into the woods” (Levine, 2017).
Goodman is a pious man who throughout the story longs to go back home, and when he and his wife participate in some “evil” ceremony, Goodman begs Faith to “resist the Wicked One” (Levine, 2017). Rip is idle who brings “ruin… on his family”, so, as he finds a group of men playing in the woods, he joins them and cannot resist drinking some unknown liquor (Levine, 2017). Both men change their personalities by the end of their stories, as Goodman becomes stern and distrustful, and Rip ages for twenty years over a night and finds his village and family completely changed.
Reference
Levine, R. S. (Ed.). (2017). The Norton anthology of American literature (9th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.