Illustrations of Conformity

             Conformity, perhaps the most cumbersome of all social pressures, appears many times throughout Literature. For instance, in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," the element of conformity appears, as an excuse for the main character to engage in conduct that he realizes is wrong. In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," conformity appears in a very different aspect. In this story, we venture into a seemingly average village to learn how the pressure to conform can be so powerful that people, who would otherwise be very much like any of us, repeatedly engage in a barbaric custom, with conforming to an age old tradition being the only reasoning for their actions. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," conformity drives the main character into madness, as she goes against her better judgment to adhere to the protocol prescribed by her husband. What gives conformity its tremendous strength? To answer that question, let us delve further into this timeless issue that continues to plague society, with an analysis of it's significance in the aforementioned literary works.
             In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," we see conformity compel Young Goodman to participate, in a satanic, pagan coven, where the participants are all his neighbors and friends. The participation of all his closest associations is of tremendous significance. Never was the magnitude of his fellow men's shared engagement in this evil endeavor made more clear, than it was by the statement "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not a dream!" {pgs. 306 &307} This statement demonstrates man's nature to measure his morality and even worth in comparison to his fellow man. This is not an accurate method of evaluation for our morality or worth, as we well know. We all, however, have been guilty of making these sorts of excuses for ourselves and even accep...

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Illustrations of Conformity. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 21:44, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/34963.html