Goodmanby The Scrivener Transcendentalism Analysis

Explain and cite two examples by two different authors of the transcendentalist preoccupations with conformity or desire to break from conformity

The aim of this essay is to explore the transcendentalist concerns with conformity or desire to break from it. For establishing such contrast this analysis takes as a point of reference Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and Melville´s Bartleby the Scrivener
Ralph Emerson in his The Transcedentalist had declared that what we call transcendentalism is Idealism. Mankind can be divided into two groups, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness. The Materialist believes in ¨facts¨, in ¨history¨. On the other hand, the idealist insists ¨on the power
In the concrete world human beings are able to remember what they have acquired before birth. In order to remember the already obtained knowledge they have to make absolute use of their own intuition without referring to tuition. Isolation and connection with nature help individuals to reflect and to find the path to real knowledge. In short, Transcendentalism celebrates the value of individual conscious, self-reliance and intuition in matters of moral guidance and
Young Goodman Brown decides to make a dangerous journey to test his own faith. In such journey he encounters the devil only to prove that he is able enough to meet an extraordinary evil force and return successfully to the good path. His decision is based on the Puritans´ concept of pre-destination; which states that whether an individual will be saved or doomed have already been set in the moment of its conception. He is so much concerned with the idea of being saved that he is decided to do what others respectable puritans have done before in order to achieve the salvation.
At the beginning Young Goodman Brown is reluctant to join the devil in the journey and mentions that his ancestors would never have gone into the forest. ¨My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept.¨ To his astonishment, the Devil explains that he is well acquainted with Young Goodman Brown 's ancestors. Besides, the devil helped his father and grandfather to lash a Quaker woman and to burn an Indian