conflict between good and evil essay

Join Now to View Premium Content

GradeSaver provides access to 2359 study guide PDFs and quizzes, 11005 literature essays, 2764 sample college application essays, 926 lesson plans, and ad-free surfing in this premium content, “Members Only” section of the site! Membership includes a 10% discount on all editing orders.

Doctor Faustus (Marlowe)

The struggle between good and evil in doctor faustus anonymous.

In Doctor Faustus , good and evil are presented as two polarized ideas: God and Heaven on one side, and Lucifer and Hell on the other. Contrasting representations of this division also appear, such as the old man and the Good Angel opposed to Mephistopheles and the Bad Angel. Initially, this struggle between good and evil is Faustus' major internal conflict as he is deciding whether to make the blood bond. However, by the time Faustus views the seven deadly sins, evil persists as the dominant force and is the path that Faustus follows to his final damnation.

The struggle between good and evil begins with Faustus' divided conscience. The Good and Bad Angels represent the conflict between his devotion to knowledge and his longing for power. They most blatantly exemplify the traits of good versus evil when the Good Angel tells Faustus to "think of heaven and heavenly things" (2.1.20) while the Bad Angel tells Faustus to "think of honor and wealth" (2.1.21). However, at the end of the play, the Good Angel and the Bad Angel no longer appear. This absence represents Faustus' commitment towards evil, symbolized through the blood bond. No longer does he reminisce about turning to God, nor does he lament...

GradeSaver provides access to 2312 study guide PDFs and quizzes, 10989 literature essays, 2751 sample college application essays, 911 lesson plans, and ad-free surfing in this premium content, “Members Only” section of the site! Membership includes a 10% discount on all editing orders.

Already a member? Log in

Home Essay Examples Philosophy Good and Evil

Good Versus Evil In Literature

Category Philosophy
Subcategory Philosophical Concept
Topic Good and Evil

The conflict between good and evil is a common theme explored in literature. Two works of literature that reflect this binary between good and evil are Doctor Faustus, written by Christopher Marlowe, and Macbeth, written by Shakespeare. Every day, a person is faced with the decision to choose between the two, whether or not there seems to be a solution to either decision. These stories represent characters that make the decision to hunch to a lower level in order to suppress their ideas of what they want in relation to religion. In these two works of Doctor Faustus and Macbeth, the characters are faced with what it is like to be entirely consumed by one’s evil and the internal fight to choose between being a good humane individual or one that is abominable and inhumane.

The two literary works of Macbeth and Doctor Faustus were produced in the Elizabethan Era of the Renaissance. In this era, the leading religions were ones consistent with Christianity-based backgrounds (Hunter). These two works of literature incorporate the beliefs of Christianity and the Supernatural in order to support the underlying theme of deception versus reality (Nosworthy). Macbeth and Doctor Faustus both integrate this deception by incorporating the tragedy of one sinning and how it affects whether a person goes to heaven or hell (Nosworthy). In Marlowe’s writing, the main character, Faustus begins to question and deny his beloved religion in exchange to “gain deity” (Marlowe). Whereas in Shakespeare’s writing, the main character Macbeth is presented as a religious man whose religion is seen to play a key role in his destiny (Shakespeare). Though both of these two works of literature have incorporated religion into them, the difference between the character’s religious views are made apparent.

Our writers can write you a new plagiarism-free essay on any topic

In Christopher Marlowe’s drama Doctor Faustus, Faustus is presented with two contradicting perceptions of good and evil (Marlowe). These being that God is located in Heaven on the good side and Lucifer in Hell on the other. This internal conflict that Faustus feels between good and evil is stemmed from his divided consciousness (Marlowe). Faustus is visited by good angels along with bad ones to serve him with his conflicting thoughts between his allegiance to familiarity and his craving for dominance. These angels most openly depict the characteristics of good against evil when the angel of goodness reminds Faustus to “think of heaven and heavenly things” whereas the evil angel encourages him to “think of honor and wealth” (Marlowe). These visits from the angels encouraged Faustus to question his whole religious and scientific fate. According to Sullivan’s work, the topic of Faustus’s inner conflict in regards to his religion and how the evil consumes him to sell his soul causes him to be damned to hell (Sullivan). Though Faustus was faced with many opportunities to repent his sins and turn back to his beloved God, Faustus continuously was faced with overbearing temptation to choose evil over good.

In Shakespeare’s drama Macbeth, the main character Macbeth is an ambitious man who lets that ambition get the best of him (Shakespeare). This well-known drama is one that illustrates the evil and corrupt aspects of human nature, yet the drama also compares these evils to the power of good (LaBlanc). The main source of evil throughout this story is the witches along with Macbeth’s wife, Lady Macbeth (Callaghan). The witches and Lady Macbeth use Macbeth’s human weaknesses and religion to play mind games with him and encourage him to do such things against his morals (Shakespeare). Macbeth is a man of religion and believes it is his religious fate to become Thane of Cawdor, but what he does to receive this title is quite the opposite. To achieve his “fate” of being Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth believes he must overthrow King Duncan by murdering him because that is what Lady Macbeth and the witches told him to do (Callaghan). LaBlanc perceives the appeal of Lady Macbeth being able to convince Macbeth to do such ungodly acts to fit in with her “strange amalgam of unrepentant evil, repressed ambition, diabolical sexuality, and maddening guilt” type of personality (LaBlanc). Though the negative influence that the witches and Lady Macbeth have over Macbeth is strong and overpowering, these negativities do have a sense of good in them because they give Macbeth courage and confidence.

These two works of literature, Macbeth and Doctor Faustus, somewhat mimic each other when it comes to the main character being overcome by evil due to the power of persuasion (Nosworthy). The power of one being persuaded to do something unthinkable in order to obtain a lifelong dream is exactly what happens in both of these literary works. Doctor Faustus and Macbeth are blinded by their own ambition, which causes them to become extreme in their thoughts and behaviors (Nosworthy). In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Faustus is easily persuaded into choosing a life of sin by the evil angel, Mesastopholes, in order to acquire fame and dominance (Marlowe). The power of persuasion can be seen in almost the exact manner in Shakespeare’s Macbeth when Macbeth is told everything he has longed to hear for so long from his wife and the witches (Callaghan). These negative energies exhibited in both of the dramas cause for the characters to question their religion and their overall beliefs. In the end of both of these two literary works, the evil that had now consumed the characters leads to their own damnation (Nosworthy).

Though in the end, the characters of both of these works of literature are entirely consumed by evil, do not forget that the characters had the chance to overcome and ignore these devilish tendencies (Nosworthy). The characters could have chosen to remain content with their current lives rather than letting ambition cloud their judgments. In Doctor Faustus, Faustus continuously contemplated turning to his God in a time in need claiming he had been “deprived of those joys” due to turning his back on his religion (Marlowe). With this being said, Faustus really had every opportunity to repent from his mistaken sins until the very end, yet he chose to fall for Mesastopholes claims that heaven is “ not half so fair as thou” (Marlowe). The same issue of evil overcoming one is viewed in Macbeth as well. Macbeth had every opportunity to stop allowing for his ambition to cloud his judgment and end his killing streak, yet he chose to continue until his life was the one being taken (Shakespeare). Each of these characters had a choice to choose between being a person of evil or goodness, yet they let the persuasion of evil cloud the choice of choosing to be good (Nosworthy).

The belief that there is a strong battle between the choice of good and evil within Macbeth and Doctor Faustus is undeniable. Faustus chose to waste his time suffering because he could not resolve the choice of choosing to long for power and the devotion he had for his knowledge (Sullivan). Faustus chose to be selfishly ambitious causing himself to be the reason for his own damnation (Sullivan). Macbeth and his wife fell victims to the consequences of having an evil soul (Callaghan). Macbeth started out with good intentions, but he fell a victim to his wife’s darkness that is associated with her evils (Callaghan). Many people are faced with a choice between good and evil daily. What a person chooses when faced with the choice between good and evil shows their true character. Though everyone can fall into the temptation of evil at times, it is what one does in response to that choice that shows their true colors. In the literary works of Macbeth and Doctor Faustus, the characters encounter what it is like to be truly evil and how ambition clouded their judgment of choosing to be a good human being rather than being abominable and inhumane.

We have 98 writers available online to start working on your essay just NOW!

Essay about Good & Evil in Macbeth

Macbeth - Good and evil. The eternal struggle between good and evil is one of the central themes of the play Macbeth. The conflict between good and evil can be seen in the inner struggles of both Macbeth and Banquo. Macbeth chooses evil when he allies himself with the witches, yet he continues to be troubled by his conscience. Lady Macbeth chooses evil when she invokes the evil to ‘Unsex’ her, but is ultimately driven insane by her troubled conscience. Banquo falls victim to temptation when he fails to speak out against Macbeth.

While the struggle between good and evil is initially psychological or spiritual in nature, it inevitably assumes a military dimension. In other words, the conflict that starts in the hearts and minds of Macbeth and Banquo is ultimately settled when the forces of good physically confront ‘devilish Macbeth’. Throughout the play Macbeth’s reign is associated with the forces of evil. The witches who contribute to Macbeth’s downfall are symbols and agents of evil. In stark contrast Duncan, Malcolm, Macduff and Edward are associated with the powers of good.

The evil that disrupts the natural order must be defeated so that the natural order can be restored. When Macbeth consorts with the witches he enters a world of evil. The Witches are in the dramatic opening scene they help to create the ominous, evil atmosphere that pervades the play. The witches’ hideously ugly appearance suggests their evil nature. They delight in mischief and cruelty. These ‘instruments of darkness’ help to bring about Macbeth’s downfall by drawing out ambition within him. They also contribute to Banquo’s moral decline by tempting him with promises of things to come.

We witness the struggle between good and evil within the mind of Macbeth. The tragic hero is deeply interested in the witches’ prophecies to become king. After receiving news that he has been made thane of Cawdor, Macbeth is convinced that he is destined to become king: ‘the greatest is behind. ’ While he is horrified by the idea of killing Duncan, it is an idea that remains rotted in his mind: ‘…why do I yield to the suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs against the use of nature? ’ in a key soliloquy In act 1 scene 7, Macbeth wrestles with his conscience.

He realises that Duncan’s kinsman, subject and host, his duty is to protect the king. He also reminds himself that Duncan has been a good king: ‘so clear in his great office’. Concluding that his only reason for killing Duncan is his ‘vaulting ambition’, he tells his wife that they will ‘proceed no further in this business. ’ However, following Lady Macbeths dramatic intervention, Macbeth ignores the voice of his conscience and re-dedicates himself to the murder: ‘I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. ’ Tempted by the witches and browbeaten by his wife, Macbeth chooses evil.

This moral choice will have profound consequences both for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and for all of Scotland. Despite choosing evil, Macbeth never entirely silences the voice of his conscience. th voices he hears in Duncan’s chamber and the ghost of banquo are products of his guilty conscience and vivid imagination. At the close of the play Macbeth is reluctant to fight Macduff: ‘my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already. ’ Lady Macbeth is seen to align herself with the forces of darkness when she prays to evil spirits to ‘unsex’ her and fill her full of ‘direst cruelty’.

Her claim that she would sooner smash the head of the child she was feeding than break her word to Macbeth suggests that she is wholly evil. However following the murder of Duncan she is tormented by her conscience, eventually losing her sanity: ‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’. Both Macbeth and lady Macbeth pay a high price for choosing evil. The kingship brings no sense of satisfaction and neither ever again enjoys any sense of inner peace. Lady Macbeth sadly reflects that ‘nought’s had, all’s spent where our desire is got without content’.

The defeat of Macbeth’s better nature leaves him empty and desolate. By the closing stages of the play, Macbeth sees no point to life and is ‘weary of the sun. ’ the evil that he and Lady Macbeth embrace eventually destroys them both. We also see the struggle between good and evil in the heart of Banquo. When Banquo first encounters the witches he displays little interest in their prophecies. Indeed he warns Macbeth that these ‘instruments of darkness’ may ultimately betray him: ‘… win us with honest trifles to betray us in deepest consequence. ’ However, at the start of act 2 we see Banquo wrestling with his conscience.

He cannot sleep because he is tempted by the idea of his sons becoming kings. Banquo remains ultimately good, and prays for divine assistance to resist temptation: ‘Merciful powers, restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose! ’ however, Banquo’s soliloquy at the start of Act 3 suggests that the seed of temptation has taken root in his mind. He knows that Macbeth has played ‘most foully’ for the crown, but says nothing because he hopes that the prophecies will also materialise for his sons: ‘may they not be my oracles as well and set me up in hope? Banquo’s selfish inaction suggests that evil also triumphs in particular inner struggle. For much of the play evil is in the ascendency. The much-admired Macbeth succumbs to his ‘black and deep desire’ to be king and murders the virtuous Duncan. Evil comes to increasingly dominate Macbeths nature. Banquo also gives into temptation, before being murdered because Macbeth fears his ‘royalty of nature’. Macduff’s entire family is butchered as Macbeth gives free rein to his most tyrannical tendencies.

Under the usurper’s rule, Scotland becomes a land of intense suffering and misery. Macduff tells Malcolm that ‘each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face. ’ However, the forces of good led by Malcolm and Macduff eventually rally and march on Scotland. The ‘most pious’ King Edward of England provides the military support to overthrow the demonic Macbeth. Malcolm declares that the divine powers are with them in their struggle against evil: ‘Macbeth is ripe for shaking, and the powers above put on their instruments. Macbeth becomes an increasingly isolated figure as Scottish lords abandon him and give their rightful allegiance to the rightful king of Scotland, Malcolm. The defeat of Macbeth marks the defeat of evil. Macbeth’s death is necessary for the restoration of the natural order. At the close of the play, Macduff enters with the ‘usurper’s cursed head’ and hails Malcolm as the rightful king of Scotland. While Macbeths reign was from the beginning associated with the powers of evil, Malcolm will rule ‘by the grace of grace’.

Author: Angel Bell

Literature and Psychology

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Duality Between Good and Evil

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in the Forest by Carl Larsson, 1881. Photo courtesy Wikipedia

The good guy/bad guy myth

Pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil. traditional folktales never were. what changed.

by Catherine Nichols + BIO

The first time we see Darth Vader doing more than heavy breathing in Star Wars (1977), he’s strangling a man to death. A few scenes later, he’s blowing up a planet. He kills his subordinates, chokes people with his mind, does all kinds of things a good guy would never do. But then the nature of a bad guy is that he does things a good guy would never do. Good guys don’t just fight for personal gain: they fight for what’s right – their values.

This moral physics underlies not just Star Wars , but also film series such as The Lord of the Rings (2001-3) and X-Men (2000-), as well as most Disney cartoons. Virtually all our mass-culture narratives based on folklore have the same structure: good guys battle bad guys for the moral future of society. These tropes are all over our movies and comic books, in Narnia and at Hogwarts, and yet they don’t exist in any folktales, myths or ancient epics. In Marvel comics, Thor has to be worthy of his hammer, and he proves his worth with moral qualities. But in ancient myth, Thor is a god with powers and motives beyond any such idea as ‘worthiness’.

In old folktales, no one fights for values. Individual stories might show the virtues of honesty or hospitality, but there’s no agreement among folktales about which actions are good or bad. When characters get their comeuppance for disobeying advice, for example, there is likely another similar story in which the protagonist survives only because he disobeys advice. Defending a consistent set of values is so central to the logic of newer plots that the stories themselves are often reshaped to create values for characters such as Thor and Loki – who in the 16th-century Icelandic Edda had personalities rather than consistent moral orientations.

Stories from an oral tradition never have anything like a modern good guy or bad guy in them, despite their reputation for being moralising. In stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Sleeping Beauty, just who is the good guy? Jack is the protagonist we’re meant to root for, yet he has no ethical justification for stealing the giant’s things. Does Sleeping Beauty care about goodness? Does anyone fight crime? Even tales that can be made to seem like they are about good versus evil, such as the story of Cinderella, do not hinge on so simple a moral dichotomy. In traditional oral versions, Cinderella merely needs to be beautiful to make the story work. In the Three Little Pigs, neither pigs nor wolf deploy tactics that the other side wouldn’t stoop to. It’s just a question of who gets dinner first, not good versus evil.

The situation is more complex in epics such as The Iliad, which does have two ‘teams’, as well as characters who wrestle with moral meanings. But the teams don’t represent the clash of two sets of values in the same way that modern good guys and bad guys do. Neither Achilles nor Hector stands for values that the other side cannot abide, nor are they fighting to protect the world from the other team. They don’t symbolise anything but themselves and, though they talk about war often, they never cite their values as the reason to fight the good fight. The ostensibly moral face-off between good and evil is a recent invention that evolved in concert with modern nationalism – and, ultimately, it gives voice to a political vision not an ethical one.

Most folklore scholarship since the Second World War has been concerned with archetypes or commonalities among folktales, the implicit drive being that if the myths and stories of all nations had more in common than divided them, then people of all nations could likewise have more in common than divides us. It was a radical idea, when earlier folktales had been published specifically to show how people in one nation were unlike those in another.

In her study of folklore From the Beast to the Blonde (1995), the English author and critic Marina Warner rejects a reading of folktales, popularised by the American child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, as a set of analogies for our psychological and developmental struggles. Warner argues instead that external circumstances make these stories resonate with readers and listeners through the centuries. Still, both scholars want to trace the common tropes of folktales and fairytales insofar as they stay the same, or similar, through the centuries.

Novelists and filmmakers who base their work on folklore also seem to focus on commonalities. George Lucas very explicitly based Star Wars on Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which describes the journey of a figure such as Luke Skywalker as a human universal. J R R Tolkien used his scholarship of Old English epics to recast the stories in an alternative, timeless landscape; and many comic books explicitly or implicitly recycle the ancient myths and legends, keeping alive story threads shared by stories new and old, or that old stories from different societies around the world share with each other.

Less discussed is the historic shift that altered the nature of so many of our modern retellings of folklore, to wit: the idea that people on opposite sides of conflicts have different moral qualities, and fight over their values. That shift lies in the good guy/bad guy dichotomy, where people no longer fight over who gets dinner, or who gets Helen of Troy, but over who gets to change or improve society’s values. Good guys stand up for what they believe in, and are willing to die for a cause. This trope is so omnipresent in our modern stories, movies, books, even our political metaphors, that it is sometimes difficult to see how new it is, or how bizarre it looks, considered in light of either ethics or storytelling.

W hen the Grimm brothers wrote down their local folktales in the 19th century, their aim was to use them to define the German Volk , and unite the German people into a modern nation. The Grimms were students of the philosophy of Johann Gottfried von Herder, who emphasised the role of language and folk traditions in defining values. In his Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), von Herder argued that language was ‘a natural organ of the understanding’, and that the German patriotic spirit resided in the way that the nation’s language and history developed over time. Von Herder and the Grimms were proponents of the then-new idea that the citizens of a nation should be bound by a common set of values, not by kinship or land use. For the Grimms, stories such as Godfather Death, or the Knapsack, the Hat and the Horn, revealed the pure form of thought that arose from their language.

The corollary of uniting the Volk through a storified set of essential characteristics and values is that those outside the culture were seen as lacking the values Germans considered their own. Von Herder might have understood the potential for mass violence in this idea, because he praised the wonderful variety of human cultures: specifically, he believed that German Jews should have equal rights to German Christians. Still, the nationalist potential of the Grimm brothers’ project was gradually amplified as its influence spread across Europe, and folklorists began writing books of national folklore specifically to define their own national character. Not least, many modern nations went on to realise the explosive possibilities for abuse in a mode of thinking that casts ‘the other’ as a kind of moral monster.

In her book The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1987), the American scholar Maria Tatar remarks on the way that Wilhelm Grimm would slip in, say, adages about the importance of keeping promises. She argued that: ‘Rather than coming to terms with the absence of a moral order … he persisted in adding moral pronouncements even where there was no moral.’ Such additions established the idea that it was values (not just dinner) at stake in the conflicts that these stories dramatised. No doubt the Grimms’ additions influenced Bettelheim, Campbell and other folklorists who argued for the inherent morality of folktales, even if they had not always been told as moral fables.

As part of this new nationalist consciousness, other authors started changing the old stories to make a moral distinction between, for example, Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Before Joseph Ritson’s 1795 retelling of these legends, earlier written stories about the outlaw mostly showed him carousing in the forest with his merry men. He didn’t rob from the rich to give to the poor until Ritson’s version – written to inspire a British populist uprising after the French Revolution. Ritson’s rendering was so popular that modern retellings of Robin Hood, such as Disney’s 1973 cartoon or the film Prince of Thieves (1991) are more centrally about outlaw moral obligations than outlaw hijinks. The Sheriff of Nottingham was transformed from a simple antagonist to someone who symbolised the abuses of power against the powerless. Even within a single nation (Robin Hood), or a single household (Cinderella), every scale of conflict was restaged as a conflict of values.

Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans stand for some set of human strengths or frailties

Or consider the legend of King Arthur. In the 12th century, poets writing about him were often French, like Chrétien de Troyes, because King Arthur wasn’t yet closely associated with the soul of Britain. What’s more, his adversaries were often, literally, monsters, rather than people who symbolised moral weaknesses. By the early 19th century, when Tennyson wrote Idylls of the King , King Arthur becomes an ideal of a specifically British manhood, and he battles human characters who represent moral frailties. By the 20th century, the word ‘Camelot’ came to mean a kingdom too idealistic to survive on Earth.

Once the idea of national values entered our storytelling, the peculiar moral physics underlying the phenomenon of good guys versus bad guys has been remarkably consistent. One telling feature is that characters frequently change sides in conflicts: if a character’s identity resides in his values, then when he changes his mind about a moral question, he is essentially swapping sides, or defecting. This is not always acknowledged. For example, when in the PBS series Power of Myth (1988) the journalist Bill Moyers discussed with Campbell how many ancient tropes Star Wars deployed, they didn’t consider how bizarre it would have seemed to the ancient storytellers had Darth Vader changed his mind about anger and hatred, and switched sides in his war with Luke and the Rebels. Contrast this with The Iliad , where Achilles doesn’t become Trojan when he is angry at Agamemnon. Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans stand for some set of human strengths or frailties. Since their conflict is not a metaphor for some internal battle of anger versus love, switching sides because of a transport of feeling would be incoherent. In Star Wars, the opposing teams each represent a set of human properties. What side Darth Vader fights on is therefore absolutely dependent on whether anger or love is foremost in his heart.

Bad guys change their minds and become good in exactly the same way in countless, ostensibly folkloric, modern stories: The Lord of the Rings , Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), the Harry Potter series (1997-2007). When a bad character has a change of heart, it’s always a cathartic emotional moment – since what’s at stake for a character is losing the central part of his identity. Another peculiarity in the moral physics of good guys versus bad is that bad guys have no loyalty and routinely punish their own; whether it’s the Sheriff of Nottingham starving his own people or Darth Vader killing his subordinates, bad guys are cavalier with human life, and they rebuke their allies for petty transgressions. This has been true since the earliest modern bad guys, though it scarcely exists among older adversaries who might be hungry for human flesh, but don’t kill their own.

Good guys, on the other hand, accept all applicants into the fold, and prove their loyalty even when their teammates transgress. Consider Friar Tuck getting drunk on ale while Robin Hood looks the other way. Or Luke Skywalker welcoming the roguish Han Solo on side. Good guys work with rogues, oddballs and ex-bad guys, plus their battles often hinge on someone who was treated badly by the bad guys crossing over and becoming a good guy. Forgiving characters their wicked deeds is an emotional climax in many good guy/bad guy stories. Indeed, it’s essential that the good side is a motley crew that will never, ever reject a fellow footsoldier.

Again, this is a point of pride that seems incoherent in the context of pre-modern storytelling. Not only do people in ancient stories not switch sides in fights but Achilles, say, would never win because his army was composed of the rejects from the Trojans’. In old stories, great warriors aren’t scrappy recruits, there for the moral education: they’re experts.

S tories about good guys and bad guys that are implicitly moral – in the sense that they invest an individual’s entire social identity in him not changing his mind about a moral issue – perversely end up discouraging any moral deliberation. Instead of anguishing over multidimensional characters in conflict – as we find in The Iliad , or the Mahabharata or Hamlet – such stories rigidly categorise people according to the values they symbolise, flattening all the deliberation and imagination of ethical action into a single thumbs up or thumbs down. Either a person is acceptable for Team Good, or he belongs to Team Evil.

Good guy/bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability, and they’re useful for getting people to sign up for armies and fight in wars with other nations. Their values feel like morality, and the association with folklore and mythology lends them a patina of legitimacy, but still, they don’t arise from a moral vision. They are rooted instead in a political vision, which is why they don’t help us deliberate, or think more deeply about the meanings of our actions. Like the original Grimm stories, they’re a political tool designed to bind nations together.

The idea that whole categories of people should be locked up made the concentration camps possible

It’s no coincidence that good guy/bad guy movies, comic books and games have large, impassioned and volatile fandoms – even the word ‘fandom’ suggests the idea of a nation, or kingdom. What’s more, the moral physics of these stories about superheroes fighting the good fight, or battling to save the world, does not commend genuine empowerment. The one thing the good guys teach us is that people on the other team aren’t like us. In fact, they’re so bad, and the stakes are so high, that we have to forgive every transgression by our own team in order to win.

When I talked with Andrea Pitzer, the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (2017) , about the rise of the idea that people on opposite sides of conflicts have different moral qualities, she told me: ‘Three inventions collided to make concentration camps possible: barbed wire, automatic weapons, and the belief that whole categories of people should be locked up.’ When we read, watch and tell stories of good guys warring against bad guys, we are essentially persuading ourselves that our opponents would not be fighting us, indeed they would not be on the other team at all, if they had any loyalty or valued human life. In short, we are rehearsing the idea that moral qualities belong to categories of people rather than individuals. It is the Grimms’ and von Herder’s vision taken to its logical nationalist conclusion that implies that ‘categories of people should be locked up’.

Watching Wonder Woman at the end of the 2017 movie give a speech about preemptively forgiving ‘humanity’ for all the inevitable offences of the Second World War, I was reminded yet again that stories of good guys and bad guys actively make a virtue of letting the home team in a conflict get away with any expedient atrocity.

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse

Michael Bacon

The scourge of lookism

It is time to take seriously the painful consequences of appearance discrimination in the workplace

Andrew Mason

Thinkers and theories

Our tools shape our selves

For Bernard Stiegler, a visionary philosopher of our digital age, technics is the defining feature of human experience

Bryan Norton

Artwork depicting a family group composed of angular lines and triangles, some but not all coloured, on a paper background

Family life

A patchwork family

After my marriage failed, I strove to create a new family – one made beautiful by the loving way it’s stitched together

The cell is not a factory

Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature. That’s why we need better metaphors to describe cellular life

Charudatta Navare

Stories and literature

Terrifying vistas of reality

H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity

Sam Woodward

The Conflict Between Good And Evil or The Three Fights in “Beowulf”

Beowulf is an epic concerning the adventures of a pagan Teutonic hero of the same name. The poem is mainly pagan in sentiment, but Christian poets who put it into writing throw a specific allegorical coloring over it.

The main events in the epic are three fights that Beowulf has to fight against three dangerous forces of darkness. Two of them are Grendel and his mother, and the third one is a foul Dragon.

Beowulf kills Grendel and his mother, but in his final battle with the Dragon, Beowulf receives a mortal wound. The poem concludes with the funeral of the hero.

These fights fought by Beowulf have allegorical significance – they appear to be the fights between good and evil. Secularly, the allegory of the fights takes the form of a struggle between the beneficent and malevolent forces in the world.

Beowulf’s Fights Convey Symbolic Significance of Christianity

Beowulf is the champion of good, and the Monsters and the Dragon symbolize evil. On the natural level also, the fight has symbolic significance. Grendel and his mother stand for welting the north sea against which the sea-farer like Beowulf and the Nordic people, in general, have to wage constant war.

As the mouth-scribe gave the poem a Christian coloring, a Christian interpretation is also possible. Beowulf, the leader of his people, fights a heroic battle against the force of death, the Dragon, and sacrifices his life in the process. He is like Jesus Christ, fighting and ultimately defeating Satan at the cast of his own life.

The Encounter Between Beowulf And Grendel

Grendel, a fierce daemon, starts attacking Hrothgar mead-hall every night and kills many of his men while they are asleep. The poet makes Grendel’s origin clear by making him a progeny of rain, the cursed son of Adam and therefore a force of evil. Beowulf comes to tackle Grendel with his followers from Geatland.

The first encounter between Grendel and Beowulf takes place on a night when the monster attacks Herot again.

Beowulf watches Grendel enter the hall, attack a sleeping thane, and eat him up. Then the fiend graves off and then engage in a fierce battle. The Danes hear the terrible sound of God’s enemy, Grendel, wailing with pain. Beowulf’s powerful grip on Grendel destroys the monster that flees to the fen to die.

The Encounter Between Beowulf And Grendel’s Mother

The second encounter Beowulf has to make is with Grendel’s mother, who is even more monstrous than her son.

After Cain kills his brother, Grendel’s mother is doomed to live in icy waters. She broods over the loss of her son and hates for the hall of the Danes to avenge the death of Grendel. Mad with anger, she breaks upon the hall door, sizes one of the men, and flees to where she lives.

Beowulf was absent from the hall on that night. Hrothgar quickly summons him to deal with this female monster. Hrothgar promises other treasures to Beowulf to seek out and destroy the monster woman in her dwelling place.

The poet presents Grendel’s mother with more evil significance than Grendel. She has an air of mystery around her, and she represents the primeval force of evil inhabiting the earth. Beowulf jumps into the swirling pool and comes to the bottom of it. He then encounters Grendel’s mother, frim and greedy guardian of that part of the water. She grabs Beowulf and carries him to her under sea-home.

Beowulf struggles with her in a hand-to-hand fight. He pulls her to the floor by the shoulder, but she is about to pierce Beowulf with her dagger. Beowulf’s corselet protects him from sure death. Beowulf springs to her feet and sees a sword of the giants among the monster woman belonging. With this, Beowulf stabs her. She dies, and Beowulf rejoices over his victory.

Beowulf’s Fight with Grendel’s Mother Represents The Good And Evil Conflict

Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother is beset with more symbolic meaning than in the case of the fight with Grendel. Here God has a more critical role to play.

Beowulf realizes that his mortal strength in the face of such evil would be inadequate. The encounter fully demonstrates the poet’s central theme of conflict between good and evil.

A thoroughly Christian theme of God’s grace has been integrated artistically within the framework of a pagan struggle between the hero and the monster.

Beowulf’s Final Fight with The Dragon

The final fight Beowulf has to fight is that dragon. This occurs in his own country, Geatland. After the death of Hygelec and his son, Heardred, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and for fifty years, he governs his people as a wise ruler. Then a fire-dragon begins to ravage the countryside because a man of the Geats steals an ornamented cup from a treasure-hoard guarded by the fire dragon.

With eleven comrades, Beowulf goes to face the Dragon. He goes near the barrow of the Dragon, leaving his comrades behind to watch the fight. He shouted defiantly to the Dragon, and a blast of firing serpent breath came from the cave.

Beowulf faces the enemy and draws his sword. The flame-breathing Dragon is ready to attack, and Beowulf advances to kill the creature with his sword. Unfortunately, the sword does not pierce the Dragon’s flesh. It becomes furious until, ultimately, it almost envelopes Beowulf in flame.

Seeing in distress, his companions flee for their own lives to the forest, except one, Wiglaf. Beowulf and Wiglaf fight side by side against the dragon. The Dragon Clutches Beowulf’s neck with its tusks and wounds him severely. Beowulf then draws his dagger and slides the monster. The Dragon is killed, but Beowulf also dies of his wounds.

The Allegorical Significance of Beowulf’s Final Fight against The Dragon

This third fight of Beowulf has more allegorical significance and symbolic value than the earlier one.

In this final war, the hero waged war against the devil itself. All his followers desert him except Wiglaf. The circumstances in which Beowulf is betrayed by his followers and dies reminded the Christian readers very quickly of Christ’s desertion and his death on the cross by the apostles.

The Dragon itself is a symbol of earthly pride; the treasure she is guarding is the emblem of worldly riches – Beowulf’s victory over the Dragon is the victory of civilization over the forces of chaos and darkness of reason and order over destruction.

All three fights epitomize the eternal fight that a man has to fight against the forces of evil lurk amid hostile nature.

The conflict between good and evil in Macbeth.

The Conflict Between Good And Evil In Macbeth

It is clear from the start of the play that the witches are the main source of evil. The witches have an enormous effect on the play, not only are they evil, but this is emphasized by the strong feelings against witchcraft in Elizabethan times. The Convicted witches were regularly tortured and executed. Almost everyone believed in witches and there was hardly any opposing persecution. King James the 1 st was also interested in the superstition, and he interrogated the accused witches himself.

It is clear from the start of the play that the witches play a key role. The first scene is the witches planning to meet Macbeth. The setting of this scene is shows that they are evil; they meet on a moor in thunder and lightning. These surroundings show an evil image; the moor is a very empty place, while thunder and lightning make it even scarier which all adds to the evil image. So even though only the first scene has been shown, we already know there will be lots of evil in the play. The witches use rhyming sentences which contradict each other and each sentence has a lot of meaning.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair’

This quote tells us about the witches´ hatred for all things good, and their love for things that are evil. Shakespeare adds rhyme and rhythm to the witches´ language to enhance their evilness.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The first meeting between Macbeth and the witches is significant as they make two predictions, “Hail to thee thane of Cawdor” and more importantly, “That shalt be king hereafter.” These predictions astonish Macbeth due to their sudden nature. This enables the witches to be able to lure Macbeth into a false sense of security and make Macbeth do their evil dirty work. The witches do manipulate Macbeth and when he tells Lady Macbeth of the predictions, an evil plan is constructed and the witches plan is going according to plan.

“I’ve done the deed.”

This deed is the worst possible crime, Macbeth has murdered king Duncan in cold blood, evil has triumphed over good. Macbeth, the good brave warrior at the beginning of the play has been driven by his ambition powered by the witches to be king.

“Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under´t.”

Lady Macbeth plants the seed of murdering king Duncan in Macbeth’s mind. The language Shakespeare uses here is very significant to the whole good vs. evil theme; the flower is associated with beauty and goodness while the snake is associated with evil.

It is only at the end of the play that Macbeth finally discovers his fate. After being told that Macduff had been, “Untimely ripped from his mothers’ womb,” describes the witches as “Juggling Fiends.” Macbeth is accusing the witches of deliberately juggling their words so that he could not understand them. This is a clever quote as Macbeth has just realised his life is in ruins, but the audience knew this earlier. The witches have changed Macbeth from a brave warrior to an evil, murderous, traitor, underlining the conflict of good and evil.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

This quote is significant as it illustrates the change in Macbeth throughout the play, now even the witches consider Macbeth to be evil. However, when looking at the path of destruction that Macbeth has left behind him it isn’t very surprising. Just one man driven by his ambition to be king has led to a chain reaction of murders

In Summary the whole play is about the battle of good versus evil; at the opening of the play Macbeth is fighting for good, for gracious Duncan against rebels, the witches mostly bring out the evil in Macbeth. Not only are the witches evil themselves but their evilness spreads to other characters throughout the play. I think there is little doubt that without the influence of the witches, Macbeth wouldn’t have murdered king Duncan.

The conflict between good and evil in Macbeth.

Document Details

Word Count 674
Page Count 2
Subject English

Related Essays

"'Macbeth' is a play about the conflict between good and evil." Discuss.

How far and in what ways do you feel that Macbeth explores the conflict bet...

Macbeth- Good vs evil

Explore the ways in which Shakespeare presents the struggle between good an...

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Dracula — Evil Against Good – Perpetual Conflict in Dracula

Evil Against Good - Perpetual Conflict in Dracula

Categories: Dracula Good and Evil

About this sample

Words: 941 |

Published: Jun 29, 2018

Words: 941 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

Expert in: Literature Philosophy

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1340 words

2 pages / 1935 words

2 pages / 887 words

3 pages / 1406 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Evil Against Good - Perpetual Conflict in Dracula Essay

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Dracula

Shelley, Mary. 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.' Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818.Stoker, Bram. 'Dracula.' Archibald Constable and Co., 1897.Cunningham, Gail. 'The New Woman and the Victorian Novel.' [...]

Stoker, Bram. 'Dracula.' Archibald Constable and Co., 1897.J.M.S. 'Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.' Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818

Shelley, Mary. 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.' Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818.Stoker, Bram. 'Dracula.' Archibald Constable and Co., 1897.

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the title character is omnipresent. To the protagonists of the novel, the difficulty of escaping his power and ultimately defeating him is often overwhelming because he is always with them in some way, [...]

Egoism, irregardless of form, is about self. Ethical Egoism states that acting in oneâs own self-interest is moral because, according to the author and philosopher Ayn Rand, life is so esteemed that it should take precedence [...]

Within the pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the author explores concepts of love, darkness, and sexuality as well as the theme of good versus evil. The most powerful theme surrounding the infamous vampire, however, is that of [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Conflict In Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown is a story about a man who struggles with internal conflict. On one hand, he wants to live a life of righteousness and virtue, but on the other hand, he is tempted by evil. This conflict is evident throughout the story, and it ultimately leads to Goodman Brown’s downfall.

The story begins with Goodman Brown about to embark on a journey into the woods. He is reluctant to go, but his wife encourages him, telling him that it will be good for him. As he travels deeper into the woods, Goodman Brown meets a stranger who looks remarkably like himself. The stranger tells Goodman Brown that he has been sent by the devil to tempt him.

Goodman Brown resists at first, but eventually succumbs to temptation and goes with the stranger. They come to a clearing where a group of people are gathered around a fire. Goodman Brown recognizes some of the people as friends and neighbors, but he is shocked to see that they are all participating in evil deeds.

Goodman Brown tries to flee, but the devilish figure tells him that it is too late for him now. Goodman Brown then experiences a vision of his wife being led away by the devil, and this finally breaks him. He wakes up from his vision in a state of madness and never recovers.

The internal conflict that Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays in Young Goodman Brown is one that many people can relate to. We all have moments where we struggle with temptation and the desire to do evil, and Goodman Brown’s story is a cautionary tale about what can happen when we give in to those desires.

The conflict in Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown is between joining the ranks of the devil and maintaining his integrity. Young Goodman Brown goes through the woods to pursue an inner ambition to be a witch while simultaneously contemplating all of the wonderful things (like his wife Faith) he would be leaving behind. The Young Goodman Brown is ultimately destroyed, and a new man emerges as a result of this internal struggle.

Though Hawthorne never comes right out and says it, Young Goodman Brown likely did not literally sell his soul to the Devil. Rather, he yielded to temptation, and in doing so, gave up a part of himself. This is what leads to Young Goodman Brown’s internal conflict- the struggle between good and evil within him. It is interesting to note that Young Goodman Brown only thinks of his wife as “Faith” throughout the story. He never refers to her by name.

This could suggest that even at this early stage in their relationship ( marriage was not yet consummated), Young Goodman Brown has already begun to idealize her to an unhealthy extent. To Young Goodman Brown, Faith represents all that is good in the world, and abandoning her would be tantamount to giving up his own goodness. Young Goodman Brown’s internal conflict is mirrored in the conflict between good and evil that exists within all of humanity.

We are all capable of both good and evil, and it is up to each of us to choose which side we will align ourselves with. Young Goodman Brown chooses evil, and in doing so, destroys himself. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown is a story about the dangers of succumbing to temptation and the duality of human nature. It is a tale that speaks to the internal conflict that exists within us all, and reminds us that we must be ever vigilant in our fight against evil.

Brown is a character that, like the rest of us, reacts to something he sees on television. When he becomes part of the Black Sabbath and participates in devil worship, however, he faces this ethical conundrum. Brown must decide before becoming a member of the Black Sabbath if his real passion is for the woods, a land of evil; or if it is for the innocence, fresh naivety, and youth with which he cherished in his village. This conflict comes up several times throughout the story. Brown grieves over the loss of his religion, which is a prevalent theme in

Young Goodman Brown also wrestles with the decision to turn his back on family and friends or to take the dark path. The Internal Conflict in Young Goodman Brown is one of the most important themes in the story. Brown must decide if he wants to succumb to the evilness that surrounds him in the forest, or if he wants to continue living with his Faith and remain pure. This internal conflict drives the plot of the story and causes Brown to make some very difficult decisions. One of the most famous examples of this conflict is when Brown leaves his wife, Faith, at the edge of the woods.

Throughout the narrative, Goodman Brown is in conflict with himself as to why he is doing it. He tries to turn back numerous times, but he is compelled to proceed on this inevitable path by the old traveler once more. When he gets close to the encounter site, he hears Faith succumb to Satan and rushes toward her.

This, however, is not the meeting that he was hoping for. Brown has to face the reality that his wife is just like everyone else and is capable of sinning. This shakes him to his core and sends him into a deep depression. In the end, Goodman Brown decides to leave Salem and never look back.

There’d be no Young Goodman Brown if it weren’t for the main characters personal struggle to decide what he would do. This is shown by the fact that most critical reviews of this tale concentrate on Goodman Browns attempt to resolve his private interests, which is in some ways indicated. We may never know if good or evil won the quarrel waged within Young Goodman Brown, but Hawthorne makes it clear that Brown was wounded for life by his experience.

Goodman Brown is, in effect, a everyman character. He is portrayed as an average guy who is just trying to do the right thing. However, he is also faced with many temptations and challenges, both from within himself and from the outside world. For example, Young Goodman Brown must constantly battle with his own desires and fears, as well as deal with the evil that lurks in the hearts of others. This internal struggle is what ultimately leads to his downfall.

While Young Goodman Brown may not be the most likable or heroic character, he is someone who we can all relate to on some level. We have all been faced with temptation and struggled with our own personal demons. And like Goodman Brown, we may not always make the right decision. But that doesn’t mean we are bad people, it just means we are human.