Examples Of Loss Of Innocence In Young Goodman Brown

March 17, 2013
Assignment #2
The Loss of Innocence Crime is an interesting aspect of our every day society. People choose to commit crimes for various motives and intentions. One thing that will always go hand-in-hand with the concept of crime is the idea of innocence. Innocence is something that we are born with and something that we slowly loose as we mature and learn. In the event of a crime, someone is always guaranteed to experience a loss of innocence whether it is the person committing the crime, the victim, or a witness. The nature of crime is not innocent, therefore the results of a crime will not be innocent. As stated above, there are many different types of crime and these types can be seen through film and literature
such as “Young Goodman Brown”, “A Scandal in Bohemia”, Heart of Darkness, and The Ox-Bow Incident. All of these works feature vastly different forms of crime but they all have the common theme of innocence and, more specifically, the loss of innocence. In the short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man is tempted into the dark woods by the Devil.
While he is in the woods, he witnesses an evil ceremony that involves many people whom he had believed were “good” and innocent. This story does not have a blatant crime such as murder or theft, rather, the crime in this story is the loss of innocence. While Young Goodman Brown is in the woods, he is tempted by evil and he sees the evil hidden within his loved ones. Young Goodman Brown is experiencing a loss of his own innocents while he is noticing the lack of innocence of those around him. By the end of the story, Young Goodman Brown has returned home where everything and everyone appears to be normal. This part in the story is where we can see how the loss that he has experienced really affects him. With the loss of innocence that young Goodman Brown has experience, he will never know whether he was dreaming or if the people around him are truly evil. This new outlook on his surroundings is going to effect how he interacts with others because he doubts their innocence. A good example of this is when Goodman Brown has finally returned home, he denies his wife a kiss because he questions her innocence and
morality. In contrast to “Young Goodman Brown”, we see a different type of crime in the short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” by Arthur Conan Doyle. This story is about a detective name Sherlock Holmes who is hired by a King of Bohemia to retrieve a photo from the King’s mistress. The crime in this story is that the mistress, Irene Adler, has stolen the photo from the King and the King wants to retrieve the photo so Irene does not use it against him. One very interesting aspect of this story is that both the King and Irene have the same motives for why they are acting the way they are: to preserve their innocence. Obviously both parties have experienced a loss of innocent by committing adultery, which can also be seen as a criminal act, but they are both acting in order to preserve whatever innocence they still have. In Irene’s case, she is stole the photo to insure her protection against the King in case he ever tried to harm her. She stole the photo in hopes to move on with her life and create a new life. In the King’s case, he is trying to get the photo back so his in-laws do not find out and to preserve his public image. Both Irene and the King are trying to preserve what is left of their innocence and the lives they have made. In the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the entire story can be seen as a string of criminal acts that ends with a finale that proves the gradual loss of innocence. In this story, Kurtz and his crew venture into the Congo in hopes to find ivory among the savages. The gradual loss of innocence that is seen in this story is experienced by Kurtz and his crew while they participate in a un-named genocide. Through their actions, Kurtz and his crew slowly loosing their innocence become savage and uncivilized. While the book progresses, the narrator Marlow starts to realize that the crew is no better than the savage tribal people of the Congo, in fact they might be worse. In the end of the book, while Kurtz is dying, his last words are “the horror, the horror” (Conrad, page 64). These famous last words represent all Kurtz has seen and lost in his life and that he is only left with the horror. This is the ideal example of a loss of innocence. Kurtz has lost all of his innocence due to his actions and what he has become. There is another major part of this story that has to do with innocence but this event has to do with protecting innocence. In the end of the book, Marlow goes to see Kurtz’s wife. Once she realizes that Marlow was the last person to see her husband alive, she asks him what were Kurtz’s last words. Marlow has to make a choice here. He could either tell her the truth and take away some of her innocence or he could protect her and lie. Marlow chooses to lie to her and tell her what he believes she would love to hear. This end to the book shows the preservation of innocence in contrast to the vast losses in the rest of the story. The film The Ox-Bow Incident directed by William A. Wellman is an old western film from 1943 which features a very serious crime; murder. This film has many of the stereotypical aspects of a “western” film, including cowboys, crime, and the search for justice. In The Ox-Bow Incident, there is a group of men searching for the men who killed a local rancher. The main crime in this film is murder, but this crime takes place twice in the film. At the end of the group’s journey, they come across a few homesteaders who are accused of murdering the farmer. The men make this assumption with no evidence or proof to back it up. They believe that these men are guilty are cannot be proven innocent so they proceed to murder them. After the men had been killed, the group realizes that they have made a mistake and they homesteaders where innocent. This story shows the abuse of innocence. These men did not commit a crime, instead, the men searching for justice lost their innocence and became the criminals. The concept of innocence is always tied to crime. Through crime, innocence can be lost by the criminal, the witness, or the victim. As seen “Young Goodman Brown”, the crime was the taking of innocence through the temptation of the devil. The result of this crime was the loss of innocence by the victim, Young Goodman Brown. In “A Scandal in Bohemia”, we see a few crimes be committed, including adultery and theft. The adultery is a selfish crime in which innocence is lost by both parties. The theft however is a crime motivation by preservation of innocence. In The Heart of Darkness, we see a string of crimes which lead to Kurtz’s complete loss of innocence and Marlow’s attempt to preserve innocence. In The Ox-Bow Incident, we see the justice seekers become the criminals. The men accuse a group of being murderers and sentence them to death. One they realize the men were innocent, they are stripped of their innocence and have become the murderers. All of these stories feature different types of crimes but they all result in a loss of innocence. Whether it is the person committing the crime or the person being victimized, crime inevitably leads to a loss of innocence by at least one party.

Works Cited
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover Publications, 1990.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Tales of Mystery and Imagination. NY: Weathervane Books, 1985. 303-318.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. Eleventh Ed. NY: Longman, 1997. 95-104.
The Ox-Bow Incident. Dir. William A. Wellman. Perf. Henry Fonda, Dana Amdrews. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. 1943. DVD.