Goldfarb has a Ph.D. in English and has published two books on the Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray. In the following essay, Goldfarb discusses the stark choice between two competing lifestyles depicted in "An End to Dreams."

In Stephen Vincent Benét's most famous story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Daniel Webster is able to convince a jury of damned souls that, despite promising his soul to the Devil in return for material prosperity, Jabez Stone should not have to surrender his soul after all, even though he did indeed receive ten years of prosperity. Avoiding the fact that Jabez Stone is breaching his contract, Webster focuses on the fact that there is good and bad in everyone and in all of American history, and without that good and bad together there could be nothing new.

Similarly, in his story "Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer...