Human beings have an inner conscious that gauge them when they try to do what they do not have to do, because the inner being remind them that there are consequences to what they opt to do. Tolstoy and Nathaniel Hawthorne have developed stories that are significantly similar because they explain the inner being and their forces, as well as the outer forces that force people to do what they might not have thought of doing and elaborate on how the devil can mock the virtues of people. Tolstoy story is “How Much Land Does a Man Need” (2015), while that of Hawthorne is “Young Goodman Brown” (2012) and they will be used to derive how each character would have overcome the inner force and how they would have prevented the consequences of the inner forces.
In Tolstoy’s story, the devil is unseen and unheard but he is determined to use the desire of people to make sure they sin, and uses people’s weakness to get what he wants and then destroy them. Pahom is a character in this story, and he has so many desires that his heart wants, and in page 222, he says that “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself”. He is desiring to have a large piece of land to an extent of he can sell his land and homestead, and use the money he gets to start all over again in another place because being in the midst of other people is a source of trouble (Tolstoy, 2015). The devil knows what Pahom yearns for, and therefore, he uses his canning powers to fulfill his wishes, especially by making him realize how bad it is to stay with neighbors after his farm was invaded by his neighbor’s animals.
Pahom is made to believe that it is a bad omen to live with neighbors because there is no peace of mind, but the truth is that peace is there but he cannot see it because he is determined to fulfill his desires on living alone on a big land. There were so many things Pahom would have done to overcome his inner forces. For instance, being contented with the small land he had and utilizing it fully would prevent the forces to desire more land. Again, the fact that his neighbor’s animals invaded his land was not enough reason for conflict, because there are legal ways of solving conflicts between neighbors. He could have also listened to his wife who was contented with the life they had, because she believed that they will always get food even though they would not be rich (Tolstoy, 2015). If perhaps he considered solving the conflict, he would have no desire to move away from them and stay on his own.
However, Pahom fell on the trap of the devil meaning that the inner forces outweighed the outside reality, and the result was his death. The desire he had for living alone was fulfilled but he did not enjoy because he was only granted a chance to live alone on the grave. If he considered living with his neighbors in his small land like before, and believe that land was not the key to happiness but good friend are, the calamity that befell him would not have occurred.
The story of Hawthorne uses a Goodman to show how people fall into sin. Just like in Tolstoy’s story, the devil is unseen and unheard, but appears to him and tried to convince him to go deeper in the woods. The devil used his canning behavior and intelligence, and disguised himself to the image of Goodman’s father because he knew that he loved his father so much. In the image of his father, the devil tries to persuade Goodman to go deeper into the woods because he wanted the worst out of him (Hawthorne, 2012).
On their walk through the woods, the devil touched leaves and they withered and dried abruptly, and this was not normal because the rate at which they dried was equivalent to a week’s sunshine. At some point, Goodman had his inner voice tell him that the person he thought was his father was actually the devil, but he ignored it because to him, the devil was telling him what he wanted to hear at that particular moment.
Goodman had the chance to avoid the devil the moment leaves dried when he touched them with his fingers, but he did not. He also would have realized how dangerous it was to go deep into the woods and he would have realized that his own father would not tell him to do what he had not told him in many years. However, he ignored everything and decided to succumb to the devil’s trick on him, and the consequences were painful in that, he ended up paranoid and could not trust his wife anymore, even though she was loving and faithful. If perhaps he would have listened to his inner force of not trusting the devil, what happened to him would not have happened.
Therefore, the following conclusions could be made from the two stories;
The devil knows pretty well what people want
The devil uses what people want to make them sin
The devil is very canning
It is the inner force that drives people to what they should not
Even though the inner force cannot be ignored, it can be controlled
Before one can decide to do something, he or she should seek advice first
It is only the best things that have severe consequences
Therefore, the fact that Pahom and Goodman ended up being to where they should not have been, just because they were too ignorant to realize that the steps they were taking towards their desires were not genuine. Besides, the fact that they did not give their decisions a second thought resulted largely to their bad ending.
References
Hawthorne, N. (2012). Young Goodman Brown. Start Publishing LLC.
Tolstoy, L. (2015). How Much Land Does a Man Need? Penguin UK.
