SCARLET LETTER - Analysis Chapter 3 : The Recognition, Chapter 4 : The Interview

SCARLET LETTER 

Analysis—Chapters 3: The Recognition, Chapter 4: The Interview
 
The town has made Hester into a “living sermon,” as Chillingworth puts it, because she is stripped of her humanity and made to serve the needs of the community. Her punishment is expressed in violent terms. Reverend Wilson relates an argument he had with Dimmesdale about whether to force Hester to confess in public. Dimmesdale spoke of such an action in terms of a rape, arguing that “it were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart’s secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence of so great a multitude.”

The men who sit in judgment of Hester are not only hypocritical but also ignorant. Bellingham, surrounded by the trappings of his office, and Wilson, who looks like “the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons,” both occupy positions where power is dependent upon self-portrayal and symbols. They know little of human nature and judge using overarching precepts rather than the specifics of an individual situation as their guides. The narrator tells us that these ignorant men “had no right” to “meddle with a question of human guilt, passion and anguish.” Dimmesdale, on the other hand, seems to know something of the human heart. He is compassionate toward Hester and is able to convince Bellingham and Wilson to spare her any harsher punishment.

As part of its meditation on the concept of evil, the text begins to elucidate Dimmesdale’s character for the reader. The emerging portrait is not altogether positive. Although Dimmesdale displays compassion and a sense of justice, he also seems spineless and somewhat sinister. His efforts to get Hester to reveal her lover’s identity involve a set of confusing instructions about following her conscience and exposing her lover in order to save his soul. The reader does not know why Dimmesdale declines to speak straightforwardly, but Hester does. When it is later revealed that Dimmesdale is the lover she seeks to protect, his speech becomes retrospectively ironic and terribly cruel. In this way, The Scarlet Letter comes to resemble a detective story: things have meaning only in the context of later information. The larger implication of such a structure is that lives have meaning only as a whole, and that an individual event (Hester’s adultery, for example) must be examined in a framework larger than that allowed by the categorical rules of religion. This notion returns the reader to the book’s general theme of whether it is ethically right to judge others.

Chillingworth, too, begins to come into focus in these pages. The novel sets up a formal parallel between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth before the story makes clear the logical connection between the two characters. In contrast to Wilson’s dehumanizing condemnations and to Dimmesdale’s mysterious circuitousness, Chillingworth’s willingness to take some of the blame for Hester’s “fall” seems almost noble. He admits that he was not the right husband for Hester and that he was remiss in not joining up with her sooner (even though he seems to have been held captive). Yet, he ultimately chooses to use his knowledge for vengeance. While he is less hypocritical than the Puritan fathers, who claim to want only the salvation of their followers, Chillingworth, as the name he takes suggests, is devoid of human warmth. His marriage to Hester—his one attempt at human contact—has led to disaster, and any compassion he may once have felt has now faded. Bellingham, Wilson, and the rest of the Puritan leadership come across as bumbling, ignorant, and silly in their pageantry and ritual when compared with the intentionally malevolent Chillingworth, who seeks revenge, destruction, and sin. Perhaps most cunningly, he forces Hester to become the keeper of everyone’s secrets, thus stripping her of any chance she may have had at redemption or a happy life.
Chillingworth’s physical deformity mirrors his spiritual deformity. As Hester suggests, he is like the “Black Man,” because he lures others into sin. By emphasizing Chillingworth’s scholarly training, the text puts a spin on the biblical equation of knowledge with evil: here it is knowledge without compassion or human experience that is the greatest evil

SCARLET LETTER - Summary Chapter 4 : The Interview

SCARLET LETTER 

Summary—Chapter 4: The Interview

Hester and her husband come face to face for the first time when he is called to her prison cell to provide medical assistance. Chillingworth has promised the jailer that he can make Hester more “amenable to just authority,” and he now offers her a cup of medicine. Hester knows his true identity—his gaze makes her shudder—and she initially refuses to drink his potion. She thinks that Chillingworth might be poisoning her, but he assures her that he wants her to live so that he can have his revenge. In the candid conversation that follows, he chastises himself for thinking that he, a misshapen bookworm, could keep a beautiful wife like Hester happy. He urges her to reveal the identity of her lover, telling her that he will surely detect signs of sympathy that will lead him to the guilty party. When she refuses to tell her secret, he makes her promise that she will not reveal to anyone his own identity either. His demoniacal grin and obvious delight at her current tribulations lead Hester to burst out the speculation that he may be the “Black Man”—the Devil in disguise—come to lure her into a pact and damn her soul. Chillingworth replies that it is not the well-being of her soul that his presence jeopardizes, implying that he plans to seek out her unknown lover. He clearly has revenge on his mind.

SCARLET LETTER - Summary of Chapter 3 : The Recognition

SCARLET LETTER
Summary—Chapter 3: The Recognition

In the crowd that surrounds the scaffold, Hester suddenly spots her husband, who sent her to America but never fulfilled his promise to follow her. Though he is dressed in a strange combination of traditional European clothing and Native American dress, she is struck by his wise countenance and recognizes his slightly deformed shoulders. Hester’s husband (whom we will learn, in the next chapters, is now calling himself Roger Chillingworth) gestures to Hester that she should not reveal his identity. He then turns to a stranger in the crowd and asks about Hester’s crime and punishment, explaining that he has been held captive by Native Americans and has just arrived in Boston. The stranger tells him that Hester is the wife of a learned Englishman and had been living with him in Amsterdam when he decided to emigrate to America. The learned man sent Hester to America first and remained behind to settle his affairs, but he never joined Hester in Boston. Chillingworth remarks that Hester’s husband must have been foolish to think he could keep a young wife happy, and he asks the stranger about the identity of the baby’s father.

The stranger tells him that Hester refuses to reveal her fellow sinner. As punishment, she has been sentenced to three hours on the scaffold and a lifetime of wearing the scarlet letter on her chest. The narrator then introduces us to the town fathers who sit in judgment of Hester: Governor Bellingham, Reverend Wilson, and Reverend Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale, a young minister who is renowned for his eloquence, religious fervor, and theological expertise, is delegated to demand that Hester reveal the name of her child’s father. He tells her that she should not protect the man’s identity out of pity or tenderness, but when she staunchly refuses he does not press her further. Hester says that her child will seek a heavenly father and will never know an earthly one. Reverend Wilson then steps in and delivers a condemnatory sermon on sin, frequently referring to Hester’s scarlet letter, which seems to the crowd to glow and burn. Hester bears the sermon patiently, hushing Pearl when she begins to scream. At the conclusion of the sermon, Hester is led back into the prison.

SCARLET LETTER - Analysis Chapter 1 : The Prison Door, Chapter 2 : The Market-Place

SCARLET LETTER

Analysis         :       Chapters 1 : The Prison-Door, Chapter 2  : The Market-Place

These chapters introduce the reader to Hester Prynne and begin to explore the theme of sin, along with its connection to knowledge and social order. The chapters’ use of symbols, as well as their depiction of the political reality of Hester Prynne’s world, testify to the contradictions inherent in Puritan society. This is a world that has already “fallen,” that already knows sin: the colonists are quick to establish a prison and a cemetery in their “Utopia,” for they know that misbehavior, evil, and death are unavoidable. This belief fits into the larger Puritan doctrine, which puts heavy emphasis on the idea of original sin—the notion that all people are born sinners because of the initial transgressions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

But the images of the chapters—the public gatherings at the prison and at the scaffold, both of which are located in central common spaces—also speak to another Puritan belief: the belief that sin not only permeates our world but that it should be actively sought out and exposed so that it can be punished publicly. The beadle reinforces this belief when he calls for a “blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine.” His smug self-righteousness suggests that Hester’s persecution is fueled by more than the villagers’ quest for virtue. While exposing sin is meant to help the sinner and provide an example for others, such exposure does more than merely protect the community. Indeed, Hester becomes a scapegoat, and the public nature of her punishment makes her an object for voyeuristic contemplation; it also gives the townspeople, particularly the women, a chance to demonstrate—or convince themselves of—their own piety by condemning her as loudly as possible. Rather than seeing their own potential sinfulness in Hester, the townspeople see her as someone whose transgressions outweigh and obliterate their own errors.

Yet, unlike her fellow townspeople, Hester accepts her humanity rather than struggles against it; in many ways, her “sin” originated in her acknowledgment of her human need for love, following her husband’s unexplained failure to arrive in Boston and his probable death. The women of the town criticize her for embroidering the scarlet letter, the symbol of her shame, with such care and in such a flashy manner: its ornateness seems to declare that she is proud, rather than ashamed, of her sin. In reality, however, Hester simply accepts the “sin” and its symbol as part of herself, just as she accepts her child. And although she can hardly believe her present “realities,” she takes them as they are rather than resisting them or trying to atone for them.

 Both the rosebush and Hester resist the kinds of fixed interpretation that the narrator associates with religion. The narrator offers multiple possibilities for the significance of the rosebush near the prison door, as he puzzles over its survival in his source manuscript. But, in the end, he rejects all of its possible “meanings,” refusing to give the rosebush a definitive interpretation.

So, too, does the figure of Hester offer various options for interpretation. The fact that she is a woman with a past, with memories of a childhood in England, a marriage in Europe, and a journey to America, means that, despite what the Puritan community thinks, she cannot be defined solely in terms of a single action, in terms of her great “sin.” Pearl, her child, is evidence of this: her existence makes the scarlet letter redundant in that it is she and not the snippet of fabric that is the true consequence of Hester’s actions. As Pearl matures in the coming chapters and her role in Hester’s life becomes more complex, the part Hester’s “sin” plays in defining her identity will become more difficult to determine. For now, the infant’s presence highlights the insignificance of the community’s attempt at punishment: Pearl is a sign of a larger, more powerful order than that which the community is attempting to assert—be it nature, biology, or a God untainted by the corruptions of human religious practices. The fact that the townspeople focus on the scarlet letter rather than on the human child underlines their pettiness, and their failure to see the more “real” consequences of Hester’s action.

 From this point forward, Hester will be formally, officially set apart from the rest of society; yet these opening chapters imply that, even before her acquisition of the scarlet letter, she had always been unique. The text describes her appearance as more distinctive than conventionally beautiful: she is tall and radiates a natural nobility that sets her apart from the women of the town, with whom she is immediately juxtaposed. Hester’s physical isolation on the scaffold thus only manifests an internal alienation that predates the beginning of the plot.

This is the first of three important scenes involving the scaffold. Each of these scenes will show a character taking the first step toward a sort of Emersonian self-reliance, the kind of self-reliance that would come to replace Puritan ideology as the American ideal. In this scene, Hester confronts her “realities” and discovers a new self that does not fit with her old conceptions of herself. Puritan doctrine views “reality” as merely an obstacle to a world beyond this one; Hester’s need to embrace her current situation (in part by literally embracing her daughter) implies a profound separation from the ideals of that ideological system. From now on, Hester will stand outside, if still surrounded by, the Puritan order.

SCARLET LETTER - Summary of Chapter 1 : The Prison Door, Chapter 2 : The Market-Place

SCARLET LETTER
 
Summary—Chapter 1: The Prison-Door

This first chapter contains little in the way of action, instead setting the scene and introducing the first of many symbols that will come to dominate the story. A crowd of somber, dreary-looking people has gathered outside the door of a prison in seventeenth-century Boston. The building’s heavy oak door is studded with iron spikes, and the prison appears to have been constructed to hold dangerous criminals. No matter how optimistic the founders of new colonies may be, the narrator tells us, they invariably provide for a prison and a cemetery almost immediately. This is true of the citizens of Boston, who built their prison some twenty years earlier.
The one incongruity in the otherwise drab scene is the rosebush that grows next to the prison door. The narrator suggests that it offers a reminder of Nature’s kindness to the condemned; for his tale, he says, it will provide either a “sweet moral blossom” or else some relief in the face of unrelenting sorrow and gloom.

Summary—Chapter 2: The Market-Place

As the crowd watches, Hester Prynne, a young woman holding an infant, emerges from the prison door and makes her way to a scaffold (a raised platform), where she is to be publicly condemned. The women in the crowd make disparaging comments about Hester; they particularly criticize her for the ornateness of the embroidered badge on her chest—a letter “A” stitched in gold and scarlet. From the women’s conversation and Hester’s reminiscences as she walks through the crowd, we can deduce that she has committed adultery and has borne an illegitimate child, and that the “A” on her dress stands for “Adulterer.”
The beadle calls Hester forth. Children taunt her and adults stare. Scenes from Hester’s earlier life flash through her mind: she sees her parents standing before their home in rural England, then she sees a “misshapen” scholar, much older than herself, whom she married and followed to continental Europe. But now the present floods in upon her, and she inadvertently squeezes the infant in her arms, causing it to cry out. She regards her current fate with disbelief.

Why majoring in English is (still) a great choice

Why majoring in English is (still) a great choice

This once-popular major is now considered a questionable choice. Here's why focusing on English language studies is a smart decision. The humanities in general, and English majors in particular, have been in decline for the past decade or two. A major that doesn't have an obvious job title attached to it leaves people befuddled. What's the point?

Here’s an experience of a young man : He had a similar sort of outlook when He was an undergraduate. He was a biology major (pre-med) and then He switched to geology, and graduated with a BS in that subject. He went out after graduating and got an excellent job as a staff geologist for a company that was eager to hire me. And He quit after six weeks. He hated the work. He ignored others’ suggestions and do something he want to do. So he got a BA in English at the same time as my BS. He will never be more grateful for a decision to have double-major.

While he will never regret the fact that he has a BS (and he still enjoy doing amateur geology when he’s traveling and hiking), it's what he learned in English-major classes that have stuck with him (and gotten him the kinds of interesting jobs he really wanted). In those classes, from Shakespeare to the British novel, from theory classes to feminism, he learned the most important thing: He learned how to think. He learned how to look at the world from varying perspectives, and he learned to write — really write, not just regurgitate information in an essay.

He has several friends who were English majors, and yes, we are all employed. He’s a nonfiction creative writer and blogger. And all of them love to read, and have a rich love of words and way of thinking about the English language that will last them far longer than any job ever will. In fact, he would argue that the open-minded, thoughtful, language-based curriculum that can be found at most good colleges and universities is more important (and ultimately, more useful) than many other more "practical" majors. What you learn as an English major can work in a number of jobs, many of them the kind that can't be exported.

As globalization proceeds apace, it seems as if the best jobs are those that will pay well (sure) but will also be those that stay in this country. That includes communication jobs, careers where a deep understanding of the language and history, and positions wherein writing clearly and well is necessary, will all continue to be needed and in-demand. Being the only person on your team, whatever the business or field, who can write well, will make you indispensable.

Writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you. No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.

Conclusion :
So, majoring in English brings people to work in a number of job, can get job apace or quickly and also best job-and they will pay you well, can communicate with other country and deep understanding of the language and history and have a skill to writing well.

Prose/Novel & Short-story (definition, differences, types of novel and example)

BRITISH AND AMERICAN PROSE / NOVEL

There are so many definitions of Novel and Short Story by any sources. So, I concluded  :
Novel   is a long written/printed story (some sources said “an invented prose narrative”), fictional narration in prose which describes intimate human experiences that is usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in specific setting.
(The novel is a genre of fiction, and fiction may be defined as the art or craft of contriving, through the written word, representations of human life that instruct or divert or both.)
Short Story   is a brief fictional prose narrative. It usually focuses on one plot, one main character (with a few additional minor characters) and one central theme.
(Short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. )

The differences between Novel and Short Story.
NOVEL                                                                                               SHORT STORY
40,000+ words                                                                              -3,500-7,500 words or (less than 8000)
Involves multiple major characters, sub-plots, conflicts, and twists.   -Describes a single event, a single    
                                                                                                       episode, or a tale of one particular
                                                                                                       character.
 Has time to explore the full three-act structure.                                -Often only has space a segment of
                                                                                                         three-act structure.
Long prose narrative                                                                       -Short prose narrative
Need more time to read                                                                  -Can be read at a single sitting.
Has much less time to hook the reader and make an impact.
Takes more time to write.                                                               -Takes less time to write.
More investments, time, risks.                                                        - Less investment, time and risk.
(writer) Have the time to create more characters, multiple important events and to go more-in depth characterization.    (writer) usually focused, centering on one major conflict, or relaying a large amount of time in a more distant and summarized manner.
Tend to sell better than short stories                                  -Readers can download for free (no need to buy).
More details about the story.                                            -Less details about the story.
More explicit                                                                   -Just a glimpse.

Three Categories of Novels :
1.    Genre Fiction is the most popular variety of fiction.
2.    Literary Novels are generally far less commercial than genre ones-but only generally.
3.    Mainstream Fiction sits more or less halfway between the other two.
Types of Novels
•    Classical Novels : Great Literary Works
The novel has evolved over time, and there are now different genres of novel which embody different distinctive characteristics. These works have become “classics” because they are considered model examples of the novel form : they are well-written and they stand the test of time.
Examples of classics novels include :
    Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, 1992
    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
    Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813
    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847
    Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott, 1868
    The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone, 1850
    Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, 1838
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843

•    Romance Novels : Stories of Love
Romance novels follow a classic form : boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. They normally contain flowery descriptions of love, and idealized versions of courting and romance.
Examples of romance novels include :
    The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
    A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks, 1999
    Finding Cinderella (Hopeless, #2,5) by Colleen Hoover, 2013
    Twilight (Twilight #1) by Stephanie Meyer, 2005
    Eclipse (Twilight, #2) by Stephanie Meyer, 2007
    Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1) by E. L. James, 2011
    Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2) by E. L. James, 2011
    The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, 2003
    Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, 1594

•    Mystery/Thriller Novels : Mystery to Solve
Mystery/Thriller novels are another sub-category of novels today. This genre features books that set up a mystery that has to be solved. The reader may be given clues to the mystery throughout the course of the book. The purpose of these works is to build suspense.
Examples of mystery/thriller novels include :
    The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2), by Dan Brown, 2003
    Angles and Demons (Robert Langdon, #1), by Dan Brown 2000
    Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson, 2011
    V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
    Sweet Dreams by James Patterson

•    Horror Novels : Mystery and Fear
Horror novels are yet another genre of novel that is very popular today. Horror novels feature mysterious and often gruesome happenings. They are intended to provoke fear in the reader.
Examples of horror novels include :
    Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1879
    Carrie by Stephen King, 1974
    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818
    The Devil Tree by Steve Vernon
    11/22/63 by Stephen King

•    Legal Thriller Novel: Justice and Law Stories
The legal thriller is a subset of the mystery/thriller novel. The legal thrillers give the reader an inside glimpse into the justice system and the exciting world practicing law. Readers are fascinated with these novels, which are the literary equivalent to television shows such as Law and Order and CSI.
Example of legal thriller novels include :
    The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Heller, #1) by Michael Connelly, 2005
    The Firm by John Grisham, 1996
    A Time to Kill
    The Rainmaker

•    Women’s Fiction Novel
The characteristics of these books include a focus on relationships, one or more strong female protagonists, women triumphing over unbearable circumstances, and the experiences of women unified in some way.
(some sources said, Women’s Fiction Novel involved in Romance Novel )
Examples of women’s fiction novel included :
    The Help by Kathryn Stockett, 2009
    The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty, 2007
    The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, 2003
    The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, 1996

•    Science-Fiction/Fantasy Novel (Sci-Fi)
Science-Fiction/Fantasy novels depict distant worlds and futuristic technologies that whirl readers far away from the here and now and yet provoke contemplation of contemporary issues. Imaginative, thoughtful, and other-worldly.
Examples of science-fiction/fantasy novel include :
    Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, 1985
    The Hunger Games (Hunger Games #1) Suzanne Collins, 2008
    Divergent (Divergent, #1) by Veronica Roth, 2011
    Insurgent (Divergent, #2) by Veronica Roth, 2012
    Allegiant (Divergent, #3) by Veronica Roth, 2013
    The Host by Stephanie Meyer, 2008
    The Giver by Lois Lowry, 1993
    I am Number Four (Lorien Legacies, #1) by Pittacus Lore, 2010
    World War Z : an Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, 2006
(most of these novels have been made into movies.)
•    Exploring Novels
1.    Adventure Novel
An adventure novel tells about an exciting and dangerous journey. It also talks about experiences and full with many events. In adventure novels, the most dominant role is man because the content of this story involves man’s problem. If women are mentioned in this novel, they are only minor character in the story.
Examples of adventure novels include :
    Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, 1726
    Stormbreaker (Alex Rider, #1) by Anthony Horowitz, 2000
    The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, 1844
    Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling, 1997
    Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2) by Suzanne Collins, 2009
    Treasure Island by Robert Louis Sterenson, 1883
    The Hobbit (Middle-Earth Universe) by J.P.R. Tolkien, 1937

2.    Psychological Novel
This novel emphasizes on the description of the character’s psychological development.
Examples of psychological novels include :
    Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, 2012
    Room by Emma Donoghue, 2010
    The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, 2002
    Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, 2007
    Life of Pi by Yann Martel, 2001
3.    Detective Novel
This novel tells about mysteries, secrets, and crimes. The author always tries to create a good technique by raising suspense to guess the follow up the story in order that the readers are more interested to read it.
Examples of detective novels include :
    A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes, #1) by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887
    Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, #1) by Lee Child, 1997
    A Time to Kill by John Gisham, 1989


4.    Sociological Novel
Sociological novel emphasized on the influence of social and economic condition on the characters and events.
Examples of sociological novels include :
    The History of Love by Nicole Kranss, 2005
    Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, 1838
    The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone, 1850
    The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, 2003

5.    Political Novel
In this novel, the problems are not observed from people’s problem point of view but it is observed from the groups problem in the society, and from the reaction of each group to the problem that arises and the character is just used as proponent of plot.
Examples of political novels include :
    1984 by George Orwell, 1949
    Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932
    The Kite Runner by Khaled Hooseini, 2002

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthrone

YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year."
"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?"
"Then God bless youe!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and may you find all well whn you come back."
"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee."
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for 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 tonight. But no, no; 't would 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."
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.
"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, "What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!"
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him.
"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone."
"Faith kept me back a while," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which 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. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
"Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."
"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st of."
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet."
"Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept"
"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. "Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their sake."
"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But these are state secrets."
"Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day."
Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing."
"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own."
"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm."
As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was going."
"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path."
Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words--a prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her and leaning on his writhing stick.
"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But--would your worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane"
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman Brown.
"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling."
"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will."
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
"That old woman taught me my catechism," said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely withered and dried up as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any farther.
"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?"
"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along."
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it.
On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young man's hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion."
"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground."
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.
"With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, "Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given."
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. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.
"Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you."
In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
"A grave and dark-clad company," quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there. At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New England churches.
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the field and rolled into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not, sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other."
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race."
"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband, "look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one."
Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, 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.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.






See also :
The Analysis of "A Dark Brown Dog" by Stephen Crane

How Adults Get Children to Pay Attention

How Adults Get Children to Pay Attention

Speakers depend on their listeners being cooperative and listening when they are spoken to. But when the listeners are children, adult speaks normally have to work a bit harder to ensure that this happens. They use attention getters to tell children which utterances are addressed to them rather than to someone else, and hence which utterance they ought to be listening to. And they use attention holders whenever they have more than one thing to say, for example, when telling a story.

Attention getters and attention holders fall into two broad classes. The first consists of names and exclamations. For example, adults often use the child's name at the beginning of an utterance, as in Ned, there's a car . Even 4 years olds know that this is an effective way to get a two year old's attention. Or, instead of the child's name, adults use exclamations like Look! or Hey! as a preface to an utterance that they want the child to pay attention to. The second class of attention getters consists of modulations that adults use to distinguish utterances addressed to young children from utterances addressed to other listeners. One of the most noticeable is the high-pitched voice adults use for talking to small children.
When the linguist Olga Garnica compared recordings of English-speaking adults talking to two year olds, five year olds, and adults in the same setting (1977), she found that when talking to children, adults use a wider with five year olds, and narrowest with other adults.

Another modulation adults use is whispering. If children are setting on their laps or standing right next to them, adults will speak directly into their ears so it is clear they are intended to listen. Garnica observed that all the mothers in her study on occasion whispered to two year olds, a few whispered to five year olds, but none whispered to adults.

Not all attention getters and attention holders are linguistic. Speakers often rely on gestures as well and may touch a child's shoulder or cheek, for example, as they begin talking. They also use gestures to hold a child's attention and frequently look at and point as objects they name or describe.

See also:
How Adults Talk to Young Children

Source : Language File: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE AND EGOISTIC PEOPLE

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE AND EGOISTIC PEOPLE

How dealing with those negative energy or people surround us without losing our power? It’s very important that we spiritually involving people. Which means at one level that we could become more and more sensitive to the beauty creations, but we feel it anymore the space that surround our self. And when people do it, negative of mind are putting negative energy that coming contact with our feel. We can immediately start to ignore it, not to be influence with something that down-line from us. But when we talk around, the negative steals that joy from our soul until we get very very tired. What we need to do is ti increase our energy feel to that point what the negative trying to bind us. So, we can deal with this social interaction, we are connecting with that. The two eyes of a person, reflect what they’re being, their character. And we can know them by the personality eyes.

It’s a wonderful way to prepared the stage for the kind of communication that very flowing and open. If we’re dealing with egoistic, the definition of egoistic is “ he thinks he is who he thinks he is.” They try to impose us or their words try to impose who they think we are. They don’t care about love, carrying, connection. Why we should spiritually involving people, play by the rules that people trap in the there dimensions of consistence used all the time to make it through ?  because their trying manipulation, to bind us and pushing the aggressive. They’re trying to be right and try to be won. They’re practicing for twenty four hours a day.

So, we need to bring the power back in to our life and it called “ Mastering Life Through Higher Power”. It’s the power who I am. We should bring back the power when we face the situation or vibration. It can changing the atmosphere. So, they eye of we’re being and the personal self and trans-personal we have, we can  go to out to the world and see that we can shake that egoistic people. When we missing one part of it, we’re not in balance. We need to be fully present right down the soul is to be present right down to the soul in our feet. That basically to train our self to be able to do that.

Imagination is a big part of living really this abundant magical juicy life. Believe that we have a huge potential to moving through the modern world and empowering people. Because it’s the time of spiritual heroism. We need to be heroic, to be embody the power of spirit in our life no matter what’s going on around us. That’s the true spiritual heroism. And remember that we have to make sure what we want is what really we want, because it will show up. The um-manifest, like the character that we can imagine around us, helping us, and living that, feeling that, in our concept mind for being is not making the different between what’s real and what’s not real. And people do that, they can create the juicy format without wearing weird or strange. We have to trying to make our imaginations, our hopes, our dreams and visions that invisible manifest in the world, because it’s not visible. Every person have to explode their creativity with different way.

To bring up our energy and vibration in this flour and juicy life, we need to bring sexuality energy to our mind cell and it starts to bring it in to our body. Produce our being to our image. That’s intelligent to embody to our cells in our body is the highest produce to everything we eat, everything we drink that produce moral string. When we don’t do that, we can take that energy and use it to give birth to our cells. It’s a very gentle healthy connection with one sexual-ism to flash out all the memories from the past and realize more that stuff to be more relax followed by saying “ i have faith and confident in my future. I am secure.”

So, it means that letting go and moving forward. While we’re talking to people, we have to feel our feet on the floor, bringing the mentally and the energy to our feet all the time. Many people, they have a experience about sexuality with their bodies but the souls are involve in it. And also they’re trying to involve the tension the day and the struggle between woman and man. It’s about to connecting and approach by body, mind and emotions. That all focus together instead to self remember. The atmosphere in any room, they carried the particular quality determine by the thoughts, and the attitudes and the activities of the people in that habitat. And when one habit like our become, through our meditation practices, through our self remembering, through the harmony between us, it’s because the atmosphere is permitted in our relationship and people wanna feel that vibrations of love.

What To Do if You Feel Hopelessness

HOPELESSNESS

The feeling of hopelessness is the feeling state that the result of the thought that we were trapped in a terrible situation and we are powerless to change it. It's complete despair.

Hopelessness is the lowest frequency that we can find on earth. It's the feeling that causing the people to suicide.

What to do if you feel hopelessness?
Here are some steps you could do.

1. Whatever you do, don't try to think positive. Anything you try hard to do get out of feeling hopelessness will take you deeper and you'll get stuck.
2. From this point, you got two options. First, you can do anything you want to do to distract yourself. Sometimes, placing your attention to anything else on something that makes you feel better. Maybe you watch your favorite movies or videos, play games, read books, or do some hobby that you know will improve your mood. Second option that you stop doing anything else and instead of all intention of your consciousness.
3. Liberally to focus on positive thoughts. Stop trying on anything else and just focus on it (consciousness)!
4.  Observe your emotional and thoughts
5. List the things to look forward to and feel the gratitude on things you have written in the list.
6. Ask yourself : "What situation feel intolerable?, How am I holding myself back or holding myself as prisoner right now?, is it 100% true that I'm trapped?"
7. Get-out and enjoy the things that you love to do and consciously know about this.
8. Know that cry is a huge release. You can cry to release this emotion inside of you and feeling much better after that.
9.  Let go of things that can't be change, and allow God/universe to open the door.

Analysis of Young Goodman Brown by Nataniel Hawthrone

“THE FALL OF THE GOODMAN IN NATANIEL  HAWTHRONE’S YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN”

 Nathaniel Hawthrone wrote this short story Young Goodman Brown in the Romantic Period. Characteristics of the American Romantic period include a fascination with the supernatural, an impulse toward reform, the celebration of the individual, a reverence for nature, and the idealization of women.
The fall of the Goodman in this short story because of his decision to go to forest at night and he turns to devil. At the first paragraph of the short story, he decides to leave his wife at home and go to the forest.

“Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown. ”

Hawthrone presents the character Young Goodman brown and Faith as his wife. The symbolism of the names, Young Goodman Brown symbolizes the innocence of young, good men, who are all tempted and to some extent all give in and Faith symbolizes the Young Goodman’s Brown faith.
This short story takes place in Salem Village that remains the most notorious colonial town in American History, famous for its witch trials in 1692 (dramatized brilliantly by Arthur Miller in The Crucible). At the core of the Salem Witch Trials was the hypocrisy of the town's more prominent citizens and the stupidity and pride of the town's clergy in encouraging the trials to take place. It would not be a stretch, therefore, to assume that the "good people" of Salem would have communed with the devil (symbolically speaking). Hawthorne had a personal connection with the trials, being a descendant of one of Salem's prominent judges who sentenced several "witches" to death.
The fall of this Young Goodman Brown by leaving his wife and go to the forest. Although Brown dies a bitter man, blaming the wickedness and hypocrisy of others, he leaves his Faith first. Puritans believed the woods or the forest to be the habitat of the devil. The woods in "Young Goodman Brown" are an obvious symbol of the devil's abode. It can be construed further as the journey into sin and darkness. The pink ribbons that Faith puts in her cap represent her purity. The color pink is associated with innocence and gaiety, and ribbons themselves are a modest, innocent decoration. Hawthrone mentions Faith’s pink ribbons several times at the beginning of the story, imbuing her charater with youthfulness and happiness.
“Prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”

Young Goodman Brown sounds like a real dork, leaving his poor wife alone after being married for only three months. Faith is obviously a symbol and Young Goodman Brown is denying his faith and intends to make a pact with the devil. Although no specific sin is mentioned and Young Goodman Brown’s journey is symbolic of embracing sin in general, it can be assumed that a young man taking off at dark and not returning until the morning is probably being unfaithful to his marriage covenant. Young Goodman Brown gets what's coming to him when he spots Faith in the forest. He should have realized that "a lone woman is troubled" and that there are plenty of forest dwellers who enjoy taking advantage of lonely, troubled women, whose husbands tramp about at ridiculous hours. Faith has a warn him that she has such afeard that something might happen, but Young Goodman Brown still leaves her. He should stay at home.

Loss of the innocent
“With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.”

In this paragraph, Young Goodman Brown has engaged in an ironic self deception, believing his iniquitous acts have no consequences. It is this same mentality that deceives humans into racking up credit card debt, buying things they cannot afford, eating themselves into obesity, smoking, not saving for retirement, committing adultery, waiting until the night before an assignment is due to do it, and achieving mediocrity (learn how to avoid this mentality by setting goals).
He goes to the forest that symbolized as the place of the devil. He is lonely for take a walk in the forest and might be afraid. “the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead”;  This is the problem Young Goodman Brown does not take into account. He has set foot on a treacherous path and despite his future resolve to mend his ways, he may not get a chance on account of the "innumerable trunks and thick boughs overhead." And then a man joins him in his journey.
“beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him.”

Young Goodman Brown should not let anyone joins in his journey. Because as we know that anyone that mysteriously appear and join in our journey, we’ll take the wrong way or they could ruin our journey. The devil is dressed decently enough. He does not resemble the traditional image of a horned, tailed figure with a pitchfork. In fact, he bears a resemblance to YGB and "had an indescribable air of one who knew the world." If not for the fact he resided in the devil's domain, he would be difficult to detect. Note the pun: "grave means serious and where dead people go."

“It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which 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. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.”

In this paragraph, two people come along and join with Young Goodman Brown and the unknown man. These two men represent the devil and they have plan for him but he don’t recognize it. He refuses that it could his father and grandfather. One man brings a great black snake just like a living serpent as his staff. It is represented as the devil’s staff, which is encircled by a carved serpent, draws from the biblical symbol of the serpent as an evil demon. In the Book of Genesis, the serpent tempts Eve to taste the fruit from the forbidden tree, defying God’s will and bringing his wrath upon humanity.

“Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.”

Young Goodman Brown can’t accept that the people in his village turn to devil. He couldn’t say anything when he knows the truth.

“in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any farther.”
“Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin.”

Young Goodman Brown fails to realize that the sin has been committed and that he has no real reason to applaud himself or to have a clear conscience. That would be like heading to a strip bar and applauding oneself for not buying a lap dance. Irony soon follows as the reverend and the deacon pass by.

“"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion."”

Don't you hate it when everything you thought was good isn't? It would be like finding out politicians are corrupt, or professional athletes use steroids, or that college football coaches cheat. What a horrible world that would be. What Young Goodman Brwon doesn't realize is that everyone is guilty of sin, even those whom he considers above reproach. Perhaps Young Goodman’s Brown faith is misplaced.

The Weakness of Pubic Morality

“The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.”
“Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.”

Young Goodman Brown sees the corruptibility that results from Puritan society’s emphasis on public morality, which often weakens private religious faith. Although Goodman Brown has decided to come into the forest and meet with the devil, he still hides when he sees Goody Cloyse and hears the minister and Deacon Gookin. He seems more concerned with how his faith appears to other people than with the fact that he has decided to meet with the devil. Goodman Brown’s religious convictions are rooted in his belief that those around him are also religious. This kind of faith, which depends so much on other people’s views, is easily weakened. When Goodman Brown discovers that his father, grandfather, Goody Cloyse, the minister, Deacon Gookin, and Faith are all in league with the devil, Goodman Brown quickly decides that he might as well do the same. Hawthrone seems to suggest that the danger of basing a society on moral principles and religious faith lies in the fact that member of the society don’t arrive at their own moral decisions. When they copy the beliefs of the people around them, their faith becomes weak and rootless.

“The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.”“"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given."

When the pink ribbons flutters down from the sky, Goodman Brown perceives it as a sign that Faith has definitely fallen into realm of the devil. Young Goodman Brown finds that Faith is present the ceremony, it changes all his ideas about what is good or bad in the world, taking away his strength and ability to resist.

“"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along."”

The staff makes clear that the old man is more demon than human and that Young Goodman Brown, when he takes the staff for himself, is on the path toward evil as well.

“Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above the impious assembly. “

Young Goodman Brown is near the place of the ceremony of witch. The hymn and song that are played represent that he is in the place of the ceremony of the witch-the devil.  It means that he is closer to turn himself to the devil.

“ At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.”
“"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"”
“They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.”

They start the ceremony. Goodman Brown can do nothing. He can’t ignore himself to go there. He is going to become a devil. Martha Carrier is the hell queen starts the ceremony and lead it till the end.

“"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race."”

Young Goodman Brown certainly never expected that all were evil by nature, symbolizing his loss of innocence. Even Faith, his trusting wife is not pure as he imagined. He certainly did not expect that.

“And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!”

The witch baptized Young Goodman Brown with blood and put the shape of evil in his forehead as the symbolism of the devil. She wants to make Young Goodman Brown completely turn to devil by give him the demon shape.

Direct Method - ELT

THE DIRECT METHOD
As with the Grammar Translation Method, the Direct Method is not new. Its principles have been applied by language teachers for many years. Most recently, it was revived as a method when the of instruction became learning how to use a foreign language to communicate. The Direct Method has one very basic rule : No translation is allowed. In fact, the Direct Method receives its name from the fast that meaning is to be connected directly with the target language, without going through the process of translating into the students’ native language.
EXPERIENCE
The teacher is calling the class to order as we find seats toward the back of the room. He has placed a big map of the United States in the front of the classroom. He asks the students to open their book to a  certain page number. The lesson is entitled “Looking at the Map.” As the students are called one by one, they read a sentence from the reading passage at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher points to the part of the map the sentence describes after each student has read his sentence.
After the students finish reading their passage, they are asked if they have any questions.  The teacher answer their question and asks some of his own. The question and answer session continues for a few more minutes. Finally, the teacher invites the students to ask question. Hands go up, and the teacher calls students to pose question one at the time, to which the class replies. The teacher allows the class to answer the question.
The teacher next instructs the students to turn to an exercise in the lesson to fill in the blanks. They read sentence out loud and supply the missing word as they are reading. Finally, teacher asks the students to take out their notebooks and he gives them dictation. The passage he dictates is one paragraph long and is about the geography of the United States.
During the remaining two classes this week, the class will :
1.    Review the features of United States geography.
2.    Following the teacher’s directions, label blank maps with these geographical features. After this, the students will directions to teacher, who will complete a map on the blackboard.
3.    Practice the pronunciation of “river”, paying particular attention to the /I/ in the first syllable.
4.    Write a paragraph about the major geographical features of the United States.
5.    Discuss the proverb “Time is Money”. Students will talk about this in order to understand that Americans value punctuality. They will compare this attitude with their attitude with their own view of time.
THINKING ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE
Let’s make some observation on our experience. The principles of the Direct Method that can be inferred from our observations will be listed below.
OBSERVATION    PRINCIPLES
1.    The students read aloud a passage about United States geography.    Reading in the  target passage should be taught from the beginning of language instruction; however, the reading skill will be develop through practice with speaking. Language is primary speech.
2.    The teacher points to a part of the map after each sentence is read.    Objects present in the immediate classroom environment should be used to help students understand the meaning.
3.    The teacher users the target language to ask the students if they have a question. The students use the target language to ask their questions.    The native language should not be used in the classroom.
4.    The teacher answers the students’ question by giving examples.    The teacher should demonstrate, not explain or translate. It is desirable that students make a direct association between the target language meaning.
5.    The teacher asks questions about the map in the target language, to which the students reply in a complete sentence in the target language.    Students should learn to think in the target language as soon as possible. Vocabulary is acquired more naturally if the students use in full sentences, rather than memorizing word lists.
6.    Students ask questions about the map.    The purpose of language learning is communication (therefore students need to learn how to ask questions as well as answer them).
7.    The teacher works with the students on the pronunciation of “Appalachian”.    Pronunciation should be worked on right from the beginning of language instruction.
8.    The teacher corrects a grammar error by asking the students to make a choice.    Self-correction facilities language learning.
9.    The teacher asks questions about the students, the students ask each other questions.    Lesson should contain some conversational activity-some opportunity for students to use language in real contexts. Students should be encouraged to speak as much as possible.
10.    The students fill in blanks with prepositions practices in the lesson.    Grammar should be taught inductively. There may never be an explicit grammar rule given.
11.    The teacher dictates a paragraph about United States geography.    Writing is an important skill, to be developed from the beginning of language instruction.
12.    All of the lesson of the week involve United Stated geography.    The syllabus is based on situations or topics, not usually on linguistic structures.
13.    A proverb is used to discuss how Americans view punctuality.    Learning another language also involves learning how speakers of that language live.

REVIEWING THE PRINCIPLES
The principles of the Direct Method :
1.    What are the goals of teachers who use the Direct Method ?
Teachers who use the Direct Method intend that students learn how to communicate in the target language. In order to do this successfully students should learn to think in the target language.
2.    What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
Although the teacher directs the class activities, the student role is less passive than in the Grammar Translation Method. The teacher and the students are more like partners in teaching/learning process.
3.    What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?
Teachers who use the Direct Method believe students need to associate meaning in the target language directly.  In order to do this, when the teacher introduces a new target language word or phrases, he demonstrates its meaning through the us e of pictures. Students speak in the target language a great deal and communicate as if they were in real situations.
4.    What is the nature of student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?
The initiation of the interaction goes both ways, from teacher to students and from students to student to teacher, through the latter is often teacher directed. Students converse with one another as well.
5.    How are the feeling of the students dealt with?
There are no principles of the method which relate to this area.
6.    How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
Language is primarily in spoken, not written. Therefore, students study common, everyday speech in the target language. They also study the culture consisting of the history of the people who speak the target language, the geography of the country of countries where the language is spoken, and information about the daily lives of the speakers  of the language.
7.    What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?
Vocabulary is emphasized over grammar. Although work on all four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) occurs from the start, oral communication is seen as basic.
8.    What is the role of the students’ native language?
The students’ native language should not be used in the classroom.
9.    How is evaluation accomplished?
We didn’t actually see any formal evaluation in the class we observed; however, in the Direct Method, students are asked to use the language, not to demonstrate their knowledge about the language. They are asked to do so using both oral and written skills. For example, the students might be interviewed orally by the teacher or might be asked to write a paragraph about something they have studied.
10.    How does the teacher respond to student errors?
The teacher, employing various techniques, tries to get students to self-correct whenever possible.
REVIEWING THE TECHNIQUES
     Reading Aloud
Students take turns reading sections of passage, play, or dialog out loud. At the end of each student’s turn, the teacher uses gestures, pictures, examples, or other means to make the meaning of the section clear.

     Question and Answer Exercise
This exercise is conducted only in the target language. Students are asked questions and answer in full sentences so that they practice with new words and grammatical structure. They have the opportunity to ask questions as well as answer them.

     Getting Students to Self-Correct
The teacher of this class has the students self-correct by asking them to make a choice between what they said an alternate answer he supplied. There are, however, other ways of getting students to self-correct. For example, a teacher might simply repeat what a student has just said, using a questioning voice to signal that something was wrong with it. Another possibility is for the teacher to repeat what the student said, stopping just before the error. The student knows that the next word was wrong.

     Conversation Practice
The teacher asks students a number of questions in the target language, which the students have to understand to be able to answer correctly. In the class observed, the teacher asked individual students questions about themselves. The question contained a particular grammar structure. Later, the students were able to ask each other their own question using the same grammatical structure.

     Fill-in-the-blank Exercise
This technique has already been discussed in the Grammar-Translation Method, but differs in its application in the Direct Method. All the items are in the target language; furthermore, no explicit grammar rule would be applied. The students would have induced the grammar rule they need to fill in the blanks from examples and practice with earlier parts of the lesson.

     Dictation
The teacher reads the passage three times. The first time the teacher reads it at a normal speed, while the students just listen. The second time he reads the passage phrase by phrase, pausing long enough to allow students to write down what they have heard. The last time the teacher again reads at a normal speed, and the students check their work.

     Paragraph Writing
The teacher in the class asked the students to write a paragraph in their own words on the major geographical features of the United States. They could have done this from memory, or they could have used the reading passage in the lesson as a model.