"Young Goodman Brown"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown". The paper discusses the symbolism expressed in the book and analyzes the ways that the language he uses adds to the reader's understanding of the symbolism. The paper concludes that Hawthorne's work is a deep spiritual analysis of life and of the symbolic order of the ideal worlds of consciousness.

From the Paper:

"Therefore, the main symbolic elements in the story, among which the most important are the forest whose deepness and darkness intimates of the mystery of sin and the darkness of the human subconscious, then the staff, which is at the same time a token for the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and also a trace of the similar staff held by Moses, that was also transformed into a serpent, all point to the author's propensity for giving a picture of the ideal and spiritual life, opposed to a description of the real. Thus, we see that, as Melville observed in his study of the work of Hawthorne, the author's inclination to describe everything in spiritual terms, can draw a comparison between the poet and the prophetical voice of Mosses, the latter being, significantly, the prophet who transcribed the plates on which the ten commandments and the capital sins were written, following the divine dictation."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel Young Goodman Brown at www.online-literature.com
• Longfellow, Henry Wardsworth Nathanial Hawthorne, in The Critical Heritage, ed. Crowley Donald, London, UK: Routledge, 1997
• Mayo, Amory Dwight ,Hawthorne as a religious novelist in The Critical Heritage, ed. Crowley Donald, London, UK: Routledge, 1997
• Melville, Herman Hawthorne and His Mosses in The Critical Heritage, ed. Crowley Donald, London, UK: Routledge, 1997
• Poe, Edgar Allan A Study of Hawthorne, The Critical Heritage, ed. Crowley Donald, London, UK: Routledge, 1997

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