Young Goodman Brown and Dream Within A Dream Essay

             In the story of "Young Goodman Brown", by Nathaniel Hawthorne, we can assume that he was either dreaming, hallucinating or in some sort of non-reality situation. In the poem " A Dream Within A Dream", by Edgar Allen Poe, it's basically describing how you sometimes wish your dreams don't become a reality. Although, this poem and short story have similarities, they do have some differences.
         "Young Goodman Brown" was written to show that sometimes dreams show you reality. In this case, it was things or people not being who they appear to be. After leaving his wife, Faith, Goodman enters a lonely forest encountering with an old man with a staff. Even though Goodman Brown was hesitant to continue to walk, he still walked through the forest. They continued walking and found themselves with Deacon Gookin and Goody Cloyse. After spending moments with these people, they were like role models to him. However, these people were really evil and in relation with the devil. Brown lost his 'Faith' completely and he also became evil. Brown was in a ceremony crying out loud, when there entered his wife Faith, but she could not here him. He later then woke up and everything seemed normal in the ceremony. In the poem " A Dream Within A Dream" it is explained that dreams seem hard to comprehend. In the second stanza it's basically explaining how sometimes it's difficult to remember dreams.
         The poem and short story may seem similar, they have complete differences. Each author delivered a different message. In the poem it says "And I hold him within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep through  my fingers to the deep, while I weep- while I weep!" ( stanza 2, lines 14-18).  This is a representation of how hard it is to remember a dream and how you wish you can hold onto that dream longer. In the story it says "Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away" (par. 44). The author is talking about Brown's dream again and what happened on the night he lost his faith. These are two different examples of using images to understand a scenario.
         Dreams can be so real that once you wake up from them, it seems as if you were still in them for a moment. The poem explains how dreams change the way you see things and make you question it. These pieces were very similar although one was a short detailed story while the other was a short poem.