Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” are two texts that clearly resemble two male figures that grow to have a negative output on how they live; moreover, giving up on life. Both characters in these stories go throughout a multitude of drastic events that shape how each of them perceive situations in which they withstand. These two texts in particular share similarities of the presence of death and the idea of solitude, but differentiate in the idea of what they cherish and how they seem to cope with certain situations specific to them. Throughout the stories of “Young Goodman Brown” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, a recurring theme of both characters giving up on life is present through the ways in which they are both constantly surrounded by death, the effects on the characters from the view in which the stories are told, and the materialistic values that each character possesses. From this point, the counterargument of how Brown and Bartleby both live in worlds where outsiders, such as themselves, give up on living is present because of their strange experiences such as Goodman Brown not knowing if the scenario in the forest was a dream or actual reality, or even how Bartleby’s character as a whole was a strange presence to the lawyer because of the lack of Bartleby’s background. These texts allow readers to observe how two stories can be so similar through a distinct clear-cut argument, yet so different in how each character from each story goes about how they live and their view upon life itself. 

 Each main character in “Young Goodman Brown” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Goodman Brown and Bartleby, are surrounded with an invisible presence of death that takes over both of their world’s for the worse. For example, “And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil” (Hawthorne 5) shows how Goodman Brown tried for hours and hours to resist evil and not use the staff, but fell into temptation from the devil to save his wife who too was on her way to the gates of Hell. The staff “bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent” (Hawthorne 2) is a common symbol used for the Devil, Satan, (Jacobs 1) which lures people in such as Goodman Brown towards the evil pathway of life and death. Similarly, in “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, the lawyer finds out why Bartleby seemed to have a stiff personality and would rather be associated with death, “The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men?” (Melville 502). In Sean Fitzpatrick’s article he says, “And thus, Bartleby, in his forlorn dignity, merely embraces the wall, becoming a phantom of passive resistance and accentuating human suffering on every level, be it psychological, emotional, spiritual, or social. Bartleby is, in this sense, a darker creation than any horror from the pages of Poe or Hawthorne” (4) which shows readers how Bartleby was just like Brown and found death to be everywhere with no escape, resulting in the abandonment of life. 

These two texts are told in different viewpoints which isolates Brown and Bartleby in ways separate from one another from how they view life and society, while the struggle of life seems to be questioned from each character. In “Young Goodman Brown” the story is told simply by a narrator with no real influence on Brown’s actions, while “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is told from the lawyer which influences how Bartleby acts and reacts on a day to day basis. “My love and my Faith, replied Goodman Brown, of all nights in the year, this one night I must tarry away from thee. My Journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done twixt now and sunrise” (Hawthorne 1) and “… he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting” (Hawthorne 8) both show how Goodman Brown is influenced by himself; he got into a bad situation involving the Devil and Hell and now cannot undo how he views society in a negative way with people lying all around him. Laurie Ann Jacobs states how the Salem Witch Trials during this time greatly influenced this story and how “The story is literally and metaphorically a journal of a newlywed man who is walking toward spiritual crisis, hand-in-hand with the devil himself” (1). On the other hand, Fitzpatrick states about Bartleby that “No one knew where he was from, or had ever seen him outside the office. He had no friends. No habits. No distinguishing characteristics…Then came the day that gave all his secrets and eccentricities a new and electric pitch. When asked to perform a common duty, Bartleby, one day, gave the uncommon reply: I would prefer not to” (2). This reply that Bartleby constantly uses all came into play because of the effects of the lawyer on Bartleby’s life; “Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby” (Melville 501) shows readers how the lawyer made Bartleby so dependent on others and eventually insane that his outlook on life was that death would indeed be more enjoyable than life. 

Throughout both stories of “Young Goodman Brown” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, each of the characters share similar materialistic values that they individually possess. In the story of “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Bartleby seems to value the concept of self-worth and aloneness; “Encountering the overpowering melancholy isolation of Bartleby amounts to a type of conversion to the complexities and consternations of humanity for the narrator, a man who struggles with shades of hypocrisy in his belief that the easiest way of life is the best” (Fitzpatrick 4) represents how Bartleby values life in simplicity and as soon as he is faced with the overpowering lawyer and post work from the dead letter office he feels as if life for him is deceased, which is resulted in his death at the prison, “Imagination will readily supply the meagre recital of poor Bartleby’s internment” (Melville 501). Like Bartleby, in “Young Goodman Brown”, Goodman Brown also has materialistic values that shape his outlook on life; he values independence by how he believes he can adventure into the forest and find his worth in life, along with trust because at the end of the story readers are not sure if his forest episode was dream or reality so we can see that Goodman Brown stays true to himself and believes what he sees; he takes into account that his life is changed for the worse since his trust of others is gone. Even Laurie Jacobs says, “This idea of evil past, present, and future is just another example of the allegorical nature the story has in relation to the Fall of Man” (2) which shows how what Goodman valued turned evil for him because ever since he got back from the forest “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream” (Hawthorne 8). Both these texts show readers how the objects and thoughts that they valued all came down for the worse because of them giving up on life. 

The stories of “Young Goodman Brown” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” share an argument of how each character undergoes obstacles which make them both tend to give up on life altogether. Goodman Brown starts off as an independent man with good intentions of no evil or wrong doing, but towards the end of the story he loses all trust towards everyone in his society, even his wife Faith, foreshadowing how his “faith” has been lost. Bartleby gives up on life altogether by dying at the prison at the end of the story; he begins as a shy man who only ever says a few words, but readers can tell that the sanity must have gotten to him because he obviously thought death was more enjoyable than life. Each of these stories familiarize by the fact that each character is surrounded by death throughout the entire story and also that they each have materialistic values which drive how they view their life, but differentiate in how the stories are told in different perspectives which readers can see effect the characters. “Young Goodman Brown” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” allow readers to clearly see the argument of how the two characters did indeed give up on life. 
