Questions after 4/14 Class

Good evening :)

In today's class, Sabina gave her presentation on African-American authors (thank you!), and we began discussing the canonical fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, starting with "Young Goodman Brown."  On Wednesday, we will finish discussing "YGM" and continue with "The Minister's Black Veil" and "The Birthmark."  See this link for the latter story:

http://people.bu.edu/actaylor/The%20Birthmark.pdf

We are a week away from the due date for the stand-alone paper.  What would you like to write about?

Also, what would you like to present on?

For example, maybe we need to focus on the Salem Witch Trials a little more!

Here is a History Channel documentary.  Note that it is almost an hour long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIvwbu84GiY

A law school professor has put together a web site on famous trials, and the SWT are among them:  http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm

See this link for a Smithsonian article on this topic:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/?no-ist

What light does this information shed on Hawthorne's fictions, their setting, their plot, and their depiction of character?

For more on Nathaniel Hawthorne's life, see this biography:  http://www.egs.edu/library/nathaniel-hawthorne/biography/

What do you make of his life?

Here is a link to a student's article on Brook Farm, the utopian community where Hawthorne lived for a time.  He felt uncomfortable there and eventually left.

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/ideas/brhistory.html

What does the presence of a utopian community like Brook Farm tell you about America in the mid-1800s?  Are you surprised that Hawthorne moved to Brook Farm?  Why?  Why not?

What light does the information about Brook Farm shed on Hawthorne's stories?

In "Young Goodman Brown," why does the title character remain with the devil?

What do you make of the ending of this story?  Why does YGB remain with his family and in his village?

How would you have responded to what YGB saw?  Why?

What does YGB tell you about good, evil, and morality?

How does YGB's perspective differ from the narrator's and/or the author's?  

Why does Mr. Hooper put on the black veil?

Evaluate him as a minister.

Why do his parishioners respond to him the way he does?

How does the narrator present Mr. Hooper?

Discuss Mr. Hooper's relationship with his wife Elizabeth.

In "The Birthmark," discuss Georgiana and Aylmer's relationship.

Which themes illuminate Poe's stories?  Which illuminate Hawthorne's?  Why?

Good night...and see you on Wednesday!