“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, about a Puritan man who dabbles with the concept of evil -the Dark Side, if you will. I wasn’t familiar with the story, so I got the short version from Wikipedia. Kate Beaton at Hark! A Vagrant tackles the story with humor in a series of eight strips. If this piqued my curiosity, wouldn’t it do the same for students who are facing required reading? Some teachers are already using Beaton’s work in that way. She says,
While on book tour, I visited Salem and got to see the House of Seven Gables! So I am pumped on Hawthorne. How many people have had to read this and suffer essays over the pink ribbons and etc? I used to think that for literature to be REAL it pretty well had to be chock-full of allegory and symbols. But for real, I do love it when my comics get used in a classroom setting, and I often hear from teachers who do that to warm the class up to a topic. That's great! I should ask for a list of books to cover for this reason. Feel free to email, teachers!
See the rest of the Young Goodman Brown strips at Beaton’s website.