Good vs. Evil

Good vs. Evil The role of nature and "the wilderness" is a prevalent theme appearing time and again in many pieces of American Literature. The wilderness is a major aspect of both Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." The theme the wilderness plays in these two works has some similarities yet is very different. In Mary Rowlandson's work it is a place that mainly houses life and goodness. The …

…followers; no good takes place there. In the narrative by Mary Rowlandson the wilderness is a representation of life and goodness. The idea of God appears many times in this work; Rowlandson says “but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up my spirit…”(Rowlandson, 151) This shows that God exists in the wilderness of the narrative where as only the devil exists in the wilderness of Young Goodman Brown.