El Efecto De La Soledad

The Effect of Darkness
It is said that every person is born with a dark side and that we all have the ability to tap in to and give in to this dark side. Humans are extraordinarily creatures who are influenced by many different factors and are a result of their environment and experiences. However, the reaction each individual has to their environment and experiences is different for eachperson. Some people will experience the darker side of humanity and survive to become stronger whereas others might succumb to the darkness or become weakened by it. The dark side of humanity is explored in both “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In these stories readers see the protagonist undergo a journey that exposes them to the darkside of humanity but their journeys have very different outcomes for each character.
In “The Most Dangerous Game”, the protagonist Sanger Rainsford is what some people might refer to as a man’s man or a natural leader. He is a self-confident world-renowned big-game hunter who knows how to control his emotions in order to survive any dangerous situation. When he meets General Zaroff and discoversthat he hunts humans, he remains true to his beliefs and refuses to hunt with General Zaroff. When confronted with being Zaroff’s new hunter, though he is shaken and experiences great fear, he is able to control himself and come up with a plan to successfully beat Zaroff in his own game. Rainsford’s experience with the dark side of humanity only enhanced his abilities and self-confidence; he isnot broken by this experience as clearly seen by the fact that in the end he comments that “he had never slept in a better bed” (Connell, 1924).
In total opposition to Rainsford’s role, Goodman Brown, the protagonist in “Young Goodman Brown”, shows that he is much more like a follower and easily broken by his experience with the dark side. His faith in God and his religion is easily brokenwhen he discovers that those who he believed to be the “holiest” were actually devil followers. His faith is easily broken because the source of his faith is not from his own belief in a higher power, but rather it is dependent on the level of faith and holiness he perceives from the leaders of the church and his wife. He is embarrassed to be seen in the jungle and hides when he sees Goody Cloyse,which shows that his faith is just an act, for he wants to make sure people think of him as a man of faith but is easily persuaded to partake in an unholy act. When he realizes that Goody Cloyse is a witch, that both the Minister and Deacon Gookin are followers of the devil, and believes that Faith has joined the dark side, he easily gives up on his faith and decides to join the rest. Worst ofall, in the end he is unsure of whether his experience in the forest was real or just a dream but he is unable to deal with his encounter with the dark side and ends up dying a miserable man.
These two different experiences with the dark side are also different in that Rainsford experience was much more physical versus Goodman’s emotional experience. Rainsford had to rely on his militarytraining and hunting experience to beat his opponent; it was survival of the fittest. Rainsford had the proper experience to deal with his enemy whereas Goodman had never experienced anything like he did that night. Goodman’s experience was of an emotional and spiritual nature; he was confronted with the devil himself and was completely traumatized by all of the evil he was exposed to in one night.His whole life was turned upside down as he was awakened to the realization that everyone he thought he knew was not whom they seemed to be, including his father and grandfather. In Goodman’s defense, his experience with the dark side was much more traumatic. Rainsford killed his version of the devil at the end and had nothing to worry about after that, whereas Goodman had to live with those he...