Benito Cereno

Although I found the story interesting, what struck me most about the play is Melville's take on the human spirit. Through studying and analyzing Hawthorne, it can easily be said that he considered human nature to be this dark driving force that was the underlying evil in most individuals. Hawthorne gave off the impression that there was a little bit of evil in even the best of people. However, I see Melville as offering a new approach. In reading Benito Cereno, I see Melville as portraying the human spirit, at least the spirit in Delano, as innately good. His kind -natured protagonist has a good heart and tends to believe the best of people, almost to a point of naivety.
In several instances, Melville references how Delano dismissed thoughts or suspicion solely because he wanted to believe the best in people. For example, even when Delano first encounters Cereno, he is left baffled by his strange antics but he dismisses strange antics of the San Dominick's captain as the product of all of the troubles he had just encountered. The reader later learns that his antics were caused by his troubles but not troubles due to bad weather. Delano even goes as far to express his envy of Bano's and Cereno's relationship as he seems to forget the typical relationship between whites and Africans of the day. Despite his intuitive feelings, Delano continues to dismiss all of the odd occurrences and comes up with off-the-wall reasoning to compensate for them. In fact, the only time Delano does speak up is when he vocalizes his dislike of Cereno keeping Atufal in chains because the slave was so well mannered and polite. Once again, this demonstrates Melville's display of an innately good human spirit through Delano. I believe the supreme show of Delano's good-heartedness is when he begins to speculate that Cereno may even be planning an attack; but, ignoring his, his ship's, and his crew's safety, again dismisses it as silliness.
However, the supreme difference in Hawthorne and Melville is the fact that Melville didn't necessarily allow Delano's kind nature to get the best of him. I believe Hawthorne would have continuously referred to his nature as naive and immature and would have created a scenario where everyone suffered brutal deaths and Cereno was the epitome of evil. Melville, on the other hand, permitted some truth to Delano's belief to be somewhat accurate; Cereno was the victim, not the perpetrator.

Young Goodman Brown

This is about the third time I have read Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and I still find Faith the most intriguing character. She represents so many aspects of the story, not only Young Goodman Brown's wife but also his "faith" as well as the "faith" of other members of the community. We even see Brown inadvertently refer to his wife as his faith. He also conceives his wife as innocent and pure and this often weighs on his conscious when he begins to partake in "unchristian" activities. Young Goodman Brown feels especially bad when he leaves to enter the woods, which can be perceived as a sign of evil; and, he even uses his wife an an excuse to his tardiness in meeting the mysterious man we later learn is the devil. Brown tells the devil that "Faith kept me back a while." This leaves plenty of room for the reader to form their own opinion of what Brown is exactly referring to by "Faith": his wife or his moral conscious. Young Goodman Brown once again uses his "Faith" as a scapegoat when he runs out of all other excuses to evade going with the devil. In this statement, Hawthorne leaves the reader to wander if Brown doesn't feel it is best to go because his wife wouldn't approve of it or because God wouldn't approve of.
However, when Brown falters in his Christian "faith," and eventually succumbs to the devil's coaching into the forest, he sees his wife about to be "baptized in blood." In this first instance, Brown comes to recognize that he had in fact put his wife on a pedestal and that she possessed an internal evil even greater than his own. This confuses and ultimately enrages Brown and he cries "My Faith is gone!" By this point in the story, I feel that it is quite obvious to the reader that he is referring to both his wife and the moral standards he had based around her. Brown even gets led to the alter himself and terrified by what he has seen and what may result if he actually partook in the communion. In turn, he yells and everything disappears and Brown is alone in the woods. When he encounters Faith when he exits the woods he shuns her because he can't ignore the evil he now associates with his wife. In this we see that when Brown had thought so highly of his wife's Christianity that he didn't give himself enough credit. He had believed that his wife was his faith when he was the one who was stronger in his own faith. This proves that even though he occasionally falters in his walk, he is ultimately the better Christian because he denies the devil, and evil, when not only Faith, but also Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin fall in their own faith.

Act II,Scene iii

This one selection from the play touches on one of the ideas that I happened to find the most interesting; Warren's loathing of her own brother's patriotic ways. Throughout The Group, Mercy preaches the importance of gaining freedom and escaping British oppression. She details the Sons of Liberty and their pursuit of freedem and attempts to persuade her readers that they, in fact, are doing absolutely nothing wrong. It can easily be understood that her purpose in composing the play was to hopefully convince Britain to hault, or at least decrease, their oppressive ways. Towards the end of the selection from Act II, Scene iii, it is quite obvious that Mercy is very patriotic herself. She rages about how she is unforgiving and phrases such as, "To equal liberty, conferred on man..." easily make her cause apparent.
One of the very first things that is addressed in this portion of the play is her brother, Brutus, and his stand against the Tory cause. From previous reading, one would assume that she would not only be proud of her brother, but also support him; however, that certainly appears not to be the case. Her use of diction around these lines pushes her point even further. Warren doesn't simply say that she "disapproved," "disliked," or "did not support" her brother, she felt it best to say she "hated" Brutus." I feel as though "hate" is one of the strongest words available to show dislike or even loathing. Yet, in the next breath, she is proclaiming his stand as "noble," thus acknowledging that it was loyal and most likely the best thing to do. I got the impression that, in Mercy's eyes, it would have been the right thing to do for anyone who wasn't her brother. Due to previous knowledge, we know that "Brutus" was Mercy's brother who resisted the Tory sympathizers and was brutally beat for it. This really swayed my opinion of Mercy and almost made me believe that, although she believed in her cause, she felt best to hide behind her words and the pages of her play. She supported the fight against the Tory's, and even felt strongly enough to write about it; however, when it came down to it, she really wasn't willing to sacrifice her own, or her loved one's, well being. I honestly believe she meant well; but, then again I have to question just how much she believed in her cause if she wasn't willing to allow herself, or her brother, to take a physical stand of resistance.