Puritans were looked upon as being fanatics. They were god's so-called chosen people. In their eyes, America was, in a sense, the second Garden of Eden. They wanted to come to America and live the perfect life in a utopian society. They emphasized "Original Sin" in their teaching, which taught that everyone was already born a sinner. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," and Jonathan Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" all depict images of the Puritan journey which include evading sin, self-improvement, and going to heaven.
             Evading sin is an important image of the Puritan journey. Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," is a story which illustrates a mans inability to confess his sins. Goodman Brown tries everything to resist his temptations but soon comes to a disillusioned realization that everyone and everything that surrounds him-his church, wife and community, are all evildoers and corrupt beings: "On 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 (pg. 716)." He could not come to grips with his own desires and so projected his own feelings of sin onto everyone else. Because he was unable to conceive the notion that everyone else's faults was his faults as well, "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 d!
             ying hour was gloom (pg. 716)." Additionally, Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Raven," is able to depict the image of the evasion of sin as well. "The Raven" questions the things one did or did not do in the course of their life. This can be considered as trying to ev...