The Devil

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" explores the theme of temptation and the potential for evil in human nature. The devil manipulates the main character, Goodman Brown, and destroys his trust in God and humanity. In "The Devil and Tom Walker," Tom and his wife are greedy and make a deal with the devil for wealth, but it ends in tragedy. Both stories show how the devil preys on people's weaknesses and desires. The TV series "Lucifer" also depicts the devil manipulating people's desires for his own benefit. Overall, these stories demonstrate that the devil uses temptation and desires to manipulate and cause suffering. Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story Young Goodman Brown follows the main character Goodman Brown as he goes into the woods and witnesses many immoral behaviors. All under the devil's temptation, the narrative investigates morality, religion, and potential for evil in human nature. After being convinced by the devil to attend a mysterious gathering, Goodman Brown goes into the woods at the beginning of the novel and sees several residents, including his own wife, engaging in immoral practices like devil worship and warcraft as he makes his way through the forest. Goodman Brown eventually surrenders to the temptation and joins the group in their forbidden actions. Despite his first hesitation, the devil manipulates Goodman Brown and takes advantage of his anxieties and fears throughout the narrative by using his persuasive powers. The devil is able to confuse Goodman Brown and destroy his trust in God and humanity by playing on his anxieties and desires. In the end, this encounter leaves Goodman Brown disillusioned and troubled, and then he returns to the town the following morning. His previous unshaken faith in the kindness of others is destroyed as he starts to mistrust everyone because he sees everyone at that gathering but the devil. In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, the devil is portrayed as a clever, manipulative character who preys on people's weakness, who feeds on people's weakness and uses it against them. Hawthorne examines the complexity of human nature and the capacity of temptation to tarnish even the most devout people through the figure of Goodman Brown. In The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom is very greedy and so is his wife. They both like money and wealth for their own self-interest. They don't even like each other. The devil makes them a deal for a lot of money in exchange for their soul, but they don't know it yet, and they agree. In The Devil and Tom Walker, the man pretty much just goes walking around a swamp. He sees a black man known as Old Scratch, but wasn't known while you're reading it, and when he confronts him, the Old Scratch offers him a deal, but at first he says no, Tom, so he goes back home to his wife. His wife and him have a very bad relationship. They're very toxic, and she's very nagging and needy towards him, so when she finds out that he went to the devil, well, not the devil, but went to this man, and didn't take the deal, she went to go try herself, and then when she tried herself, she was never to be found, and then when Tom went into the woods, he found her apron and her spoons, and then I think they found her heart and liver as well, essentially indicating that she died or tried to make a deal with the devil, and it didn't work out so well, so that is also a prime example of how the devil just manipulates you and thinks you're going to get all this reward with no consequence. In reality, the consequence is your life, and pretty much the same thing with Tom. Towards the end of the story, he lives a good life for a couple years. He's wealthy. He has a loan office, and he charges high interest, and it's not ethically or religiously good for him to do, especially since he made a deal with the devil, and the devil, when he made the deal with the devil, the devil said, oh, I'm going to own your soul, and he said okay, but he thought he could outsmart the devil by having a bible in his hand when the devil would come to take his soul, but it didn't work, and eventually he died. So, pretty much how that story and the Young Women of Brown relates is how the devil uses your desires, and he uses temptation against you. So, basically, whatever you want, you think you're going to get, but in reality, that's not the case, and you're going to pay the ultimate price at the end. Young Women of Brown, not so much, but essentially, yeah, pretty much. The last story I'm going to be talking about today is Lucifer, the TV series on Netflix. It's very popular. Basically, how Lucifer and the other two stories connect is how in Lucifer, there's multiple, multiple examples of him using his desire power. So, basically, in the show, he'll ask, either it'll be the criminals or just any people for his self-interest or the interest of his beloved girlfriend, Chloe, but he'll ask criminals or other people, oh, what do you desire the most, and then that's technically his power, and then they'll cough up whatever their desire is. In this clip, it's a prime example of how his powers are used for his own benefit and they manipulate you. So, in that clip, we see him use his powers against that guy, that actor, and he's kind of dumbfounded when he realizes what he said, and he doesn't realize what actually happened and how he made him say that, but that's how the devil works. The devil works in mysterious ways, and it's never really certain how he truly, like, what his benefits are and what his morals are. But, pretty much, in conclusion, for all three of these stories, what me and my group are trying to say is that devil is very mysterious. He won't pop up as the devil-y, you know, red horns, red wings monster that he's portrayed as in many books and stories. He'll pop up in disguise, like in Young Goodman Brown, he'll pop up as an old man, or in The Devil and Tom Walker, he'll appear as, like, a darkish man in the woods, or in Lucifer, where he'll just pop up as this typical nightclub owner in Prada suits, and, yeah, he won't really just go out and say he's the, well, technically he does say he's the devil in the Lucifer story, but the other stories not so much, and in the Lucifer series, he basically can't lie, so when people, like, try to make fun or, like, jokes of him saying that he's the devil, he doesn't deny it at all. He always says, oh, yeah, I'm the devil, I'm the devil. So I thought that was pretty interesting, but, yeah, pretty much they all have the same morals, all the devils in all different stories and portrayed throughout cinema and just writing in general, they always feed on your interests and use your interests against you to get what they want or just to see you suffer. That's pretty much the devil's morals and what they get out of it. They like to see innocent people suffer. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Hope you enjoyed.