The Problem of Corruption and Its Different Sides

Corruption happens every day, amongst a wide area of things, not just things that we know of but much deeper things such as governmental issues, some of Americas biggest wars, corruption within our tax dollars that we pay out, and many more secret things the government wouldn’t dream of telling us because they know that would cause complete havoc and chaos. How much do we really know is the real question, what goes on behind the doors of the most prestigious places? Now let’s see some sides of corruption and how it works.

To begin with, Corruption in wars has been going on for centuries but one of the most memorable had to of been the World War I. Not only did we lose many people but we invested so many American dollars into it, about 52 million to be exact. Hard earned money from every day working Americans all over a war, that is not a pleasant nor fair thing in the least bit. Where was the money going you may ask well for example “Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year.” (General Smedley Butler). That was just an amount of money spent for actual necessities for the soldiers but who really pays for most of the cost you may ask well it is the opposite of what you thought, it’s not you but it is the American solider. “But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad.” Who would’ve thought that the person who is fighting for our country is paying the most out of all of us? Not what you were expecting right?

Second of all, in the story “Young Goodman brown” there is a very big idea of corruption in the story which is one of the main themes the reader tends to notice. Typical “puritan morals” are kind of voided out and put out on the table within this story. Goodman brown was always so worried with how people viewed him, what they thought about him, and his reputation so when he really had to face his demons it was very hard for him because the reader thinks he felt ignorant for not understanding what was happening since the beginning, he didn’t realize his whole “Puritan” family was beyond corrupted and he was slowly turning into one of them. The reader does not know if he followed in their footsteps because he’s just a follower or If he followed them because it felt morally correct but personally if it was an average normal person they would have just gone down their own path and completely left everyone behind in the dust and became a better person instead of becoming a worse person. Goodman Brown meeting the devil may have been “real or fake” but does it really even matter because no matter what it shows there are evil ways stored in his mind and corrupted people who closely surround him. It took a lot of confidence for Goodman Brown to walk in the forest in the first place because he always said nothing good ever happened in there so it goes to show he is a strong-willed person even though it may seem that he is doing the absolutely most wrong and corrupted thing possible (walking in the woods).

Lastly, you may be thinking how a short story and a world issue that is still happening today have something in common, well they do, they are just laid out in different ways but overall they are both filled with corruption. Corruption with the war had to do with our tax dollars and why Americans were investing so much into the war without an actual clue of where it all was going and corruption within the story had to with a very deceiving family that looked perfect from the outside but very sick and twisted on the inside. In the story, it quoted “But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.” (Hawthorne). Which pretty much means out of all the corrupt things going on around him he was continually the center of it, the devil, himself. That quote really opened the reader up to what was actually going on.

After Goodman Brown has his experience from the night before he seems to return back to “town” as if nothing ever even happened, he does not speak of it but it’s a constant thought in his mind because no person could so easily forget about something like that and it states how he walked through the town as “The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village staring around him like a bewildered man”. Now the war was a bit different from the story obviously but both were as corrupt just in different ways.

In conclusion, Corruption is corruption no matter which way you say it, what the source of it is, or the size of the actual issue that is occurring. The reader compared real life government war corruption to an old short story written ages ago and at the end of the day both of the situations were corrupted, obviously corruption happening inside a famous American war is a bigger deal than a story they both prove many points and bring out many truths behind a lot. The corruption in the short story was based around facing your demons and realize what’s happening to you and the war corruption was based on the fact that the World War costed American tax payers 52 million dollars over time.