The Silver Lining

Even though the plagiarism issue ruined most of the week, there was bright spot in College Comp. We are writing a comparison and contrast paper between "Young Goodman Brown" and "Training Day." We had already discussed "YGB" to death, so we were watching "Training Day" and discussing similarities with the Hawthorne text. One key scene from the story that we discussed was how the devil tempts Brown with the second staff, taken from a maple tree. Brown accepts this one (he did not want anything to do with the devil's original staff - the one with the serpent on it that seemed to writhe before Brown's eyes) and when he sees his wife's pink ribbon descend from the sky, he stomps through the woods in a rage - at which Hawthorne states that Brown has now become the most terrifying thing in the woods (never mind that the devil himself is holding a black mass in the heart of the woods). What irony!

We were paralleling officer's Hoyt's temptation in "Training Day" to Brown's. At one point, Hoyt finally realizes all of the corruption in the LA narcotics unit he is trying to make, and he has had enough of it. He is finally going to make things right. He begins stalking toward where his training officer, Alonzo, has retreated with confiscated drug money (which Alonzo offered Hoyt, but Hoyt refused). He is headed toward what has been dubbed earlier in the film, an urban jungle (similar to the forest in Hawthorne's story). You can see the hate and frustration in Hoyt's face as his faith in the system has been crushed.

It is at this point that Kevin, one of my top College Comp students, asks, "This is when he is raging through the forest right?"

I can only smile a smile like I haven't had in school in months and nod.