Literaria

American short-stories
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown
The story takes place in Salem, New England. The main character Goodman Brown is at the beginning an innocent and naïve person, but as the story goes on one sees how he changes his point of views (and himself). His wife Faith I believe represents hope in this story. Faith is Brown’s hope but as the story goes on he starts tolose hope, that is, when he came to the “gathering” downtown Faith was there and he saw that she was just as corrupted and evil as the rests of them so he lost his hope in human goodness.
The story is about how everyone has some evil inside even though one is a kind person. The old man/devil showed Brown that everything is not as it seems to be. Even though everything looks good on the outsideit is not the same in the inside, and that was what the “gathering” in the church showed us readers, that it is a beautiful building and everyone is going there for a mass but when he arrives he sees that it is a witch hunt. So the church is not at all what it seems to be.
I read in another book a story about Leonardo Da Vinci and his painting The Last Supper. Da Vinci was given a mission topaint Jesus and his Twelve Apostles. To find inspiration Da Vinci went to a mass in church and while searching for inspiration he saw a boy in the church choir who radiated goodness, just like Jesus, so he decided to use the boy as an inspiration for Jesus. Da Vinci took the boy up to his studio and started to paint Jesus with the help of the boy as an inspiration. Three years went by and Da Vinci wasstill not done, he had now been pressured to finish as soon as possible and the only thing missing on the painting was Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus. Da Vinci tried to portray Judas as the evil person he was but he could not seem to show the real evil in him. One day when Da Vinci was talking a walk he saw a drunk, homeless man sitting on a bench and yelling profanities to people, and asDa Vinci was looking at him he felt the inspiration coming to him. He found his Judas. So he took the drunken man up to his studio and started to paint Judas (with the inspiration he got from the drunken man). After a while the man sobered up and started to look around in the studio and as he saw the painting he stopped.
He said to Da Vinci that he had seen that painting before which wasimpossible because Da Vinci had not shown this painting to anyone. But the drunken man insisted that he had seen it before, and as it turns out he was right. Three years earlier when he was in the church choir he had been up here to be “painted” as Jesus, because he gave the painter (Da Vinci) inspirations as Jesus.
So, in conclusion this boy was portrayed both as Jesus and Judas. So goodness and evilhas the same face.

2. Ambrose Bierce: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge:
This story takes place in northern Alabama during the period of the civil war. The main character Peyton Farquhar was a Confederate sympathizer who tried to destroy a bridge. The story begins with him being condemned to death by hanging from this bridge.
The cause which he was “fighting” for is an awful cause so Idid not feel so much compassion for him when he was sentenced to death, but as one reads along the story the compassion increases because he is the main character and almost everything about him is explained so one feels closer to him than anyone else, so when he was hanged and “fell” into the river one was routing for him and hoped that he would survive. When it turned out that he died and did notfall into the river at all, it was a bit shocking because I really thought he would survive and hopefully change his mind about the “cause”, that is, I hoped that he would appreciate that he survived and see the beauty in life and feel that everyone had the same rights to enjoy life, whether one is black or white.

3. Francis Bret Harte: The Outcasts of Poker Flat:
This story takes place...