Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown" powerfully depicts the experience of what could be called disillusionment — but that's putting it too mildly. What the title character experiences is existential shock at the realization that things, and people, are not what they seem. He just can't get over it, and descends into lifelong depression. (This was before the introduction of anti-depressants like Prozac and Paxil, which can cause weight gain and diminished sex drive.)
Set in Puritan times, "Young Goodman Brown" opens with Mr. Brown about to depart on a little business trip. He bids an affectionate goodbye to his wife, named Faith, and then heads off into the forest. There, as if by prior arrangement, he meets up with a diabolical individual who leads him deep into the foliage. And what does your Goodman Brown see in the foliage? Why, it's a full-bore Dionysian orgy — kind of like the Burning Man festival, I guess, with people dancing around and some of them maybe having sex right out in the open, although that part is left to the reader's imagination. Also, no drugs. But here's the really wild part: the "queen" of the Dionysian orgy is none other than Goodman Brown's own wife! Oy! Oy vey!
Well, when Goodman Brown gets home from his business trip Faith is right there waiting for him. But things just don't seem the same to GB — so he becomes melancholy for the rest of his life.
It's a sad story, but I can relate. Many years ago my friend Wally in high school showed me a couple of his "eight page bibles" — little pocket sized porno comics, some of which featured well-known comic book characters. I was deeply shocked to see Sluggo, from the "Nancy" comic strip, masturbating at his window as he watched Nancy jumping rope outside. A thought bubble had Sluggo thinking, "This os okay, but…" You can imagine what happened in the subsequent pages. I was actually afraid to look at them. But at the same time a whole world was opening up. Were there images, somewhere, of squeaky clean Archie and peevish Veronica? Or Superman and Lois Lane? As Arthur Graham Bell said, "What hath God wrought?"
Those memories came back to me this week when I began to research "eight page Bibles" on the interent. (Why would I do such a thing? "Nothing human is foreign to me." — Shecky Greene.) Anyway, it turns out that in true Puritan tradition some of the best eight pagers were drawn by the same artist who did the cute little comics in Bazooka Joe bubble gum! His name was Wesley Morse (1897-1963) and I'm proud to say he was born in Chicago, where Kim Novak was also born!
Here's a Bazooka Joe comic:
And here's an image from one of Morse's eight pagers. This one doesn't feature any famous characters..
Both these comics are really quite delightful, don't you think? The porno one especially has such a light touch. As a child this stuff scared me but now, as Martin L. King said, "I'm not worried about anything! I'm not afraid of any man!" That's progress!
The images come from http://lambiek.net/artists/m/morse_wesley.htm. To see more, visit that excellent site.