Author Terry Brooks wrote that "your focus determines your reality- (241). In A Midsummer Night's Dream (MND) by William Shakespeare and Young Goodman Brown (YGB) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, we are presented with evidence of the differences between illusion and reality. Every day we dance between the light and dark elements of our own souls. In our personal "inscape- (Kaul 1), we can find the source of our reality where each of us harbors a secret, buried nature. Dreams are "a name for the world out of which man emerges into conscious life, the world of the unconscious as we have a habit of calling it today- (Goddard 40). In MND, Shakespeare takes us on a light-hearted jaunt, mainly through one character named Nick Bottom, into his own heart. In contrast, Hawthorne invites us to walk alone with him, in the personae of the main character named Young Goodman Brown, on a tour of his own soul where we are all disturbed by what he finds. Each of these characters experiences a personal transformation with two different endings. Both stories tell us that we can decide for ourselves what to believe, and where our own personal journey will lead us through a world where things are not always what they seem.
Point of view and perception are important in any communication. For instance, when reading YGB and MND, we must consider the "light in which the events happen to be placed- (Lang 89). When we see or perceive something, we frequently refer to it as being "in light of- or "the light in which-. In Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, a definition of the word light includes "in the light of considering "[to] see the light (of day) 1. to come into being 2. to come into public view [to bring new facts to light] 3. to understand [and] 9. aspect [viewed in another light]-. In each story, reason and empirical action begin in the daylight and end in the daylight because "the realm of imagination is the realm of night, of moonlight and magic; it is in this realm that one truly sees' (McPherson 69).
