Good Vs. Evil In The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

Stories, short or long, possessing a moral or for fun, fiction or fact, serve as the medium to share the history of humanity. Within these stories one often finds a concept of good versus evil. While good always seems to prevail, there remains something special about the way the concept of evil has woven its way throughout the history of American literature. Evil seeks to create fear and this fear draws from the dark and shoves into the light the symbol of a monster. What defines this monster has morphed based on what evokes fear in the quivering hearts of weak men. These monsters may have been written in stories of fiction or they may have stemmed from nonfictional events, whichever the case they had an acute ability to weave their way through
history. Whether it is from the beginning where Satan and witches ruled, or to the period of hauntings of ghosts and ghouls, or to the more modern day monsters not based in religion or folklore but rather seated in the horrors man creates. The first European settlers, the Pilgrims, traveled to the New World and landed at Plymouth Rock. They were mainly searching for religious freedom. After the Pilgrims began to forge life in the New World more people bravely crossed the Atlantic. The Puritans also came to escape the religious persecution they were suffering in England. They wanted to live their life with religious beliefs at the forefront and the uncharted American territory was just the place to pursue that. The puritanical religion strictly enforced aspects of life such as the manner of dress, the gender roles in the community and the correct manner of worship. An important aspect to note about these strict rules is they manifested from the church and the church leaders. Many of the Puritan government leaders were also the church leaders and these leaders sought to maintain strict order in the community just as they sought strict order in their churches. They did this by preaching a fundamentalist interpretation from the writings of the Bible. It is in this book that the earliest source of an evil monster is derived. This monster that lived when Adam and Eve came into creation and found home in the Garden of Eden. The Puritans knew Satan and they knew he existed since the time of their birth.

Satan’s origin story, a fallen angel cast from Heaven by God, struck terror in the souls of the Puritans. Satan had many forms, a fallen angel with torn wings and a beaten body, an “angel of light”, and a hissing serpent who was, “was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made” (New International Version, 2 Corinthians 11:14) (New International Version, Genesis 3). It was the Puritans who gave Satan his most monstrous form. This Puritan image had one goal: breed fear. Satan’s image is a Frankenstein mash-up of, “One early pagan god who was half human, half goat, and to whom Christians added the wings of a fallen angel” (Inside the Salem n.p.). Not only was his countenance fearsome but he was described as deceitful and had the ability to change his appearance at will. It was easy to weave Satan into the Puritan’s stories: “The Puritans believed that the Devil was an active agent of evil in daily life and responsible for all hardships they encountered” (Stuart n.p.). When crops failed or cows died it was easy to blame these tragic events on Satan. Not only was Satan to blame for the physical hardships of the Puritans he was also the source of their spiritual hardships. History shows that Satan would stop at nothing to try and convert the colonists over to his path of sinners and nonbelievers.

In many of the Puritan’s history and stories, Satan did not act alone in his evil schemes. He sought women to help him create trouble in the mortal world. Why women? Because the fundamentalist views of the Puritans meant women were more easily tempted like that of Eve being tempted by the serpent in the Garden. The colonists wholeheartedly believed in the existence of witches. These ‘historical accounts’ lead to perhaps the greatest piece of controversy of Puritan times: the Salem witch trials. Reading the accounts of these trials in present day gives the sense of a piece of fiction. Fear is a powerful tool and the Puritan leaders didn’t hold back when it came to accusing Salem’s women of practicing witchcraft. According to the religious leaders these women engaged in witchcraft after selling their souls to Satan for an earthly pleasure. On top of this earthly pleasure the women were given supernatural powers to help aid them in the torment of men. In one such account Martha Carrier was accused of being a witch. Benjamin Abbot claimed that she had infected him with, “a pain in his side,” which proceeded to turn into, “a sore, which was lanced by Doctor Prescot, and several gallons of corruption ran out of it” (Mather 154). Clearly, to modern readers Martha Carrier had no way of creating such a sore on Mr. Abbot’s side. To the male leaders of the Puritans, on the other hand, Martha was clearly a witch. In fact, they so fully believed that she was a witch they had the account of the trial written up by a man who did not even attend the event. By the end of the Salem witch trials, 20 people had been put to death on little to no evidence. The Salem trials show that fear of an evil monster can have a strong impact of the actions of men.

Satan and his witches kept a firm grip on the colonist’s beating hearts for many years, yet as time progressed the Enlightenment occurred.
In this period of the Enlightenment, many colonists moved away from the church’s strict rules and narrow- minded teachings and looked toward more modern views and lifestyles. The name Satan didn’t command as much power as it once did. In his place a different type of monster emerged. Less religious and more supernatural creatures struck dread into the hearts of men. Ghosts and ghoulish figures drifted into American authors nighttime terrors. This transition can be clearly seen in stories like the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. The “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” takes place in a quaint neighborhood which, “abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.” (Irving n.p.). The Headless Horseman serves as the most renowned specter in the entire town of Sleepy Hollow. When he appears in the mortal world, the Horseman presents the appearance of a, “ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War” (Irving n.p.). He rides upon horseback toward the battlefield in search of his lost head and at times offer rides and challenge races to travelers. Another story that has a sense of a spiritual being wreaking havoc on a human is Edgar Allen’s poem “The Raven”. In this work by Po, a man quietly naps at his home when strange noises begin to sound. What he believes to be a visitor at his door becomes for him the essence of fear from the great beyond. The raven inexplicitly begins to repeat “nevermore” and the reader is left to wonder if this is Lenore communicating from beyond the veil. In this early American time, death was believed to be the final end in life. Now there was an idea that provided a sense of dread that one could return and it sparked
terror.

Soon the American people became numb to the fear instilled by ghosts. The idea of ghosts as monster faded away and new anxiety took its place. Similar to what occurred with the Enlightenment, people awoke from a world controlled by some unseen entity. American literature had evolved into a place where it was known the true monsters resided in humans all along. But this isn’t the only reason these ghosts were feared less. Murders, rapists, kidnappers, found their way to the forefront. These beings who one could see and touch. They look like the reflection one sees in a mirror and yet inside are the darkest monsters. It didn’t creep from the shadows like the other monsters had. This monster had been there the entire time, hiding in plain sight. In the end aren’t humans the real monsters? Upon a deeper examination, it becomes apparent that humans had written the monsters in reflection to themselves from the very beginning. Satan contained the essence of a man and witches the essence of women, ghosts were humans who had passed to the next life yet couldn’t stay away. These monsters were dressed in religious garb or draped in a veil of death, once their cloaks were stripped away that which remained embodied a human. Because even in the beginning, whether they realized it or not, humans have always had a never-ending fear of themselves and what horrors they can impart on the world. It was this self-awareness that Edgar Allen Poe developed some great works of American literature. For example, in his piece “The Tell-Tale Heart” Po writes of a ‘madman’ who is guilt ridden over a murder he committed. The narrator suffocated the old man; he, “dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him” (Po 717). The narrator proceeds to take, “wise precautions…for the concealment of the body” (Po 717). He, “cut off the head and the arms and the legs,” and hides them under the wooden planks of the floor (Po 717). In this story a man who, on the outside, shares the characteristics of all men, is presented quite differently on the inside. On the inside, the monster shines through. Someone who kills and maims. He is not supernatural or a witch or Satan; he is simply a man.

From the very beginning, when the Puritans came from England searching for religious freedom and found a tangible fear in the presence of Satan and witches, monsters have impacted American literature. When Satan was dethroned, the spirits of lost souls crept their way into the lives of the Americans. These spirits haunted the American psyche for a period of time. Yet, in the end, the final monster that emerged held a common quality between all of the monsters up until that point. This ultimate form was human and it was petrifying.