There is no knowledge that is not power. What a person does with that power however, makes all the difference in the world. Truth is one of the most important facets of information a person can obtain, and with that, comes insurmountable power. In the short stories, “Raj Bohemian” and “Young Goodman Brown” both main characters have the truth revealed to them. What these two characters do with that knowledge however, are on exact opposites of the spectrum. So who made the right decision? When shaken with an epiphany about the world around you, do you act on it or do you act as if you were never enlightened at all? And why did these two people; both in similar situations, react to their discovery so differently?
In both stories, Goodman Brown and the narrator of “Raj Bohemian” learn that the people they surround themselves with are fake. For Goodman Brown, his whole town is full of Satanists; in the Narrator case, all his friends are salesmen of trends. Understanding how much either Young Goodman Brown or the Narrator actually lost is essential in understanding why they responded how they did. Young Goodman Brown was a married man; the narrator was not. I feel as if just this detail can begin to unravel the mysteries as to why these two men acted as they did. Young Goodman Brown cared deeply for his wife. He said “Poor little Faith! . . . What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand!” and also “there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I’d rather break my own.” What these quotes show is just how deeply Young Goodman Brown cares about his wife. What this means is that when Goodman Brown saw his beloved wife at the “witch-meeting”, he lost far more than the narrator of “Raj Bohemian” did. His wife lost her innocence in Young Goodman Brown’s eyes and something like that cannot just be forgotten. The narrator of “Raj Bohemian” however, he