Reality: Our Creation 1

Reality: Our Creation 1

Reality: Our Creation

In many ways people may be considered either prisoners of theirown delusions or heroes oftheir own dreams and fantasies. Philosophers have questioned whether what people perceive to be reality is actually real. Even people often question reality, asking themselves whether what they perceive as real truly exists or if they are only wishing something to be the way they want it to be. To dream, fantasize, or even hallucinate appears to be natural for humans. Whether humans find peace and joy or pain and depression through their dreams, fantasies, or hallucinations, however, is often determined by the society in which they live, who they are, or how they view their lives and fantasies. Young Goodman Brown and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings both delve deeply into human “reality” and whether society and humans overcome them, are destroyed by them, or find happiness through them.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s A Very Old Man with Enormous Wingsappears to be a story set within a fantasy world. During a long rain storm a couple, Pelayo and his wife Elisenda, discover an old man laying face down in the mud of their courtyard. The man has wings on his back. For hours they stare at him and then, finally understand what he must be. They “intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm.” Before they touch or help him, however, and although he is unable to lift himself out of the mud, they call in their wise neighbor for a final adjudication before they make any decisions. Instantly the neighbor realizes the man is an angel who probably had come to collect their sick infant, but due to his age and condition, the storm forced him into the earth.

The way in which they think of this man changes based on their belief in who or what he is: from a stranded man to an angel. In fact, the “right” way to treat the man is directly linked to their belief in what he is because their belief in what he is establishes their reality. “Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman... they did not have the heart to club him to death” and put him in their chicken coop; caged with other winged birds unable to fly.The neighbor believed that because angels were conspirators they should be killed. Pelayo, however, is unable to kill him and after his child awakens without a fever, he and Elisenda no longer fear him. Because they “felt magnanimous” they decide to put him on a raft with three days’ provisions and set him free. Unfortunately, their neighbors discover him and treated the angel without reverence, simply mocking him because he seemed unable to perform miracles for them. In their view, a real angel would have performed miracles, but this man with wings was nothing but a poor circus misfit that deserved little humanity.

The town priest suspected an “imposter” when the man could not speak Latin, “the language of God or know how to greet His ministers.” In the reality of the priest a true angel would follow the Catholic doctrine created by man and speak pure Latin. Just in case his view of reality is wrong, however, the priest writes to his superiors who will eventually ask the Pope. The news of an angel spreads, however, and many people with illness, deformities, or pains travel to see the angel, hoping for a cure. This interest in the “angel” does improve the lives of Pelayo and Elisenda, who eventually build a fortune by charging people money to “see” the “angel.” Eventually, however, the crowds fade away as the “reality” of the angel’s miracles means that few find the salvation they sought from him. The angel becomes a burden to Pelayo and Elisenda, an inconvenience in their home, even though they earned the money to build the home because of his existence.

Only at the end, long after their discovery of the angel, do there seem to be clues to the true reality of the angel. After the angel is shown comfort and kindness by Pelayo his wings regrow a bit. One day Elisenda sees him regain flight and disappear into the sky.There is never any clear indication of what the man is, only this view of what Elisenda is said to have seen from her window. It is interesting that the conclusion to the story occurs from a very specifically framed view – that of Elisenda out of her window. This too symbolizes that what people believe is based on what their life, knowledge, and experience tell them to see. Whether the man is an angel, an agent of the devil as the priest believes may be possible because “the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary,”a lost traveler from a land where all have wings, or a representative or symbol of someone in everyday society is never stated.

What is the reality of the story? Is it fact, did this winged man fall to earth? If so, was he an angel or just a man from a race of people who had wings? If he was not truly a man with wings, did he represent something? Did the man with wings represent those who age and are forgotten or mocked by society due to their condition? Or, did the fact that he was seen to rise into the sky by Elisenda simply represent the fact that when people die after old age they find peace and regain their dignity by going to the light in the sky? Elisenda, for whom his presence had been a nuisance, is said to “let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses ... because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.” This seems to be saying that the angel returned to his home or it symbolizes that an old man died and his family was relieved at his passing. Whatever his existence may have been, it is up to the reader to decide which mirrors the way each person must decide, in his or her own life, what their version of reality is.

While in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings the reader questions the reality of the story and their own version of reality throughout, in Young Goodman Brown the setting of the story seems very real initially, it is only through its development and conclusion that both the reader and the title character begin to question what is real. Because Young Goodman Brown is set in a location that all know to exist, Salem, Massachusetts, its very beginning seems to vouch for its reality. Although the story is set in a historical time period, moreover, the fact that history proves that the Puritans did inhabit Salem at one time further adds credence to the story. The introduction to the title character, Goodman Brown and his wife Faith, through their intimate farewell also advances a belief that the story is a realistic tale because all readers can identify with young love and a desire not to be parted from a love. Soon, however, a reader begins to question Goodman Brown’s views.

Hawthorne foretells what is to come. He says that “the young man pursued his way, until, being about to turn the corner ... his heart smote him. ‘What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done to-night. But, no, no! 'twould kill her to think it. Well; she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.’” Indeed, Goodman Brown is about to turn a big corner in his life, a corner that will alter his view on who is an “angel on earth,” what “dreams” are, and whom he will follow. That one turn around the corner will completely alter Goodman Brown’s perceptions of reality and his role in life.

Indications of what is to come begin almost immediately upon Goodman Brown’s turning of the corner. Whereas before Goodman (indeed, the name if key here, he is a “good man”) Brown is a strong, capable man thinking of protecting his wife, he was a confident man on a mission and he had “excellent resolve for the future.” Quickly the reader is told that Goodman has “taken a dreary road,” and one can expect that things are about to become worse. Symbolically, when Goodman asks “‘What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow,’” a dark figure of a character, seemingly someone known to Brown, appears. It is this man/devil figure, whom Goodman trusts, who walks Brown through the night and into the forest near Salem. That Goodman at first is frightened, but then comforted by this familiar figure, provides the first indication that everything is not as it seems. Soon enough, the reader is presented with a description of this man that communicates the fact that Goodman should not be so comforted by the companionship of this man. Goodman’s reality, however, has clothed this man in the role of a family acquaintance and his belief in that reality will not listen to the warning his mind and heart have to this person.

Even when this man casts off the staff he carries with him, the one with a black snake’s head on it, which then begins to come to life, Goodman Brown cannot accept the reality of what he says. He “could not take cognizance” of what was occurring. When he observes his catechism teacher, a kind old woman known in the village for her piety, taking part in a “witch” service, he simply says, that she “taught me my catechism.” Hawthorne reminds the reader that this simple phrase has “a world of meaning.” One by one through the night this story endures, Goodman Brown sees every member of his community, all those known for their devotion to the PuritanChurch and to God, pay homage to the Devil. At last, he finally sees his wife, Faith, gladly participate in the Devil worship. It is this final shock, this last unbelievable event that makes Goodman question what is real and what is not.

Goodman is a long resident of Salem. A man brought up through the PuritanChurch to believe in the teachings of God and in the piety and good nature of his devout community members. The evening, however, shows him a world in which the most devout of Salem are actually liars. His entire foundation of reality is shaken. If the very catechism teacher, the minister, the faithful, and his wife, herself the personification of purity and Faith, cannot be trusted, what is it that Goodman Brown can believe in? Indeed, when he says “‘My Faith is gone!’after one stupefied moment” he speaks not only of his wife, Faith, but of his faith in God, Salem, and the principles upon which he believed his life was built. Just what has been his reality and what has been his fantasy is what Goodman Brown is left to wonder, as is the reader. The question is clearly stated by Hawthorne: “Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?”

Which reality would Goodman believe was the choice before him. Goodman, it seems, believed he had truly seen a witch-meeting, but he could not separate himself from the village life he no longer trusted. He was, in fact, trapped by his reality, perhaps like a man with wings who cannot fly, Goodman may have known the truth but was unable to declare it and was too afraid to make a decision as to what, in fact, believe. In the end, this “dream” or “reality” was an “ill omen” for Goodman Brown. He became a “stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man ... from the night of that fearful dream.” Goodman Brown, caught between two worlds, unwilling to release his fear of God and unable to be free from his loss of “Faith” could not trust anything. He became a man without a reality because he could not believe in anything.

There can be no better claim that men and women are the creators of their reality than the story of Young Goodman Brown. Pelayo and Elisenda and the old man with wings symbolize many realities, but all characters in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings are firmly rooted into their version of reality, from the title character to the villagers. Their worlds are not shaken by the appearance of a man with wings, because they can all classify him, in some way, into their realities, as odd as his appearance may seem to the reader. In Young Goodman Brown, however, the reality seems much more palpable. Whether it is that of Salem and the Puritans or that of the evil, dark man with Brown, or that of the “witch-meeting,” all possibilities seem real.

It is because all of these contradictory realities can be “real” that Young Goodman Brown is most effective in showing that people select their realities.Goodman Brown grew up and married under the reality that his Puritan community was pure. One night, he was not sure whether he saw a true “witch-meeting” or whether he only imagined it. He could not decide on which was real and his inability to live life thereafter seems to have come not from his loss of comfort in God or his wife, but from his loss of the ability to select a reality to believe and then to have faith in that reality. He both lived in terror of the power of God to make “the roof ... thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers” and in fear of the evil he had seen, hearing “an anthem of sin ... upon his ear” that “drowned all the blessed strain.” Goodman Brown was doomed because he could not decide if he had “fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?” Men and women not create their own reality, but it seems that they need to create their own reality.