Abstract Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown" is an allegorical account of a young man's journey one dark night into the forest outside of Salem to meet with the Devil. The paper discusses how, after the night of his journey, Brown can never look at another person without seeing that individual's hidden sin and hypocrisy and he loses his faith in religion, along with his faith in mankind. The paper focuses on the theme of truths in the novel, especially the one truth emphasized by Hawthorne, that every human, no matter how pious he or she claims to be, has not only the potential to be a sinner in thought and action, but also has committed some sort of sin.
From the Paper "Oblivious to everything except man's potential to sin, Brown becomes suspicious of every person with whom he comes into contact. He begins to see evil where none exists. Returning home from his journey the following morning, Brown observes Goody Cloyse catechizing a young girl of the village. Brown ?. . . [snatches] away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself? (128). At this moment, he forgets that Goody is the godly woman who once taught him his own catechism. From then on, Brown is "a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man" and finds listening to the church congregation sing psalms, as well as hearing the minister preach, almost unbearable. Indeed, being in church causes him to "turn pale, dreading, lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers" (129)."
Abstract The title characters of Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" and Nathanial Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" share common traits -- those of arrogance, righteousness and a belief that they could raise themselves to the level of the gods. The paper shows that both sought to define the wicked, though only Oedipus truly succeeded because he was determined to discover the truth, even if it meant his own destruction. The paper shows that Goodman Brown, through fear or stupid, smug piety never confirmed or denied whether his one defining event -- that wild witch meeting in the woods -- was reality or merely a dream.
From the Paper "In reality, Brown is a fence-sitter. He perceives himself as a perfect judge of others: Are they pious or ungodly? Do they meet at the communion table or riot in the taverns? Perhaps it is the absolutist need of his to label others to one extreme or another that put his own soul in such a precarious position when he discovered (or dreamt) that these same folk he thought were saintly Christians were all in attendance at a witch-meeting."
Abstract This paper relates that the symbolic characters of Satan, Goody Cloyse and even Martha Carrier represent symbolic characterizations of witchcraft within Salem. The author points out that the female witch is a powerful symbol of witchcraft but only through the root of all evil within Satan's power of illusion. The paper states that, by presenting Satan as the seed of all destruction, immorality and deviance, the symbol of witchcraft lies within Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" making it a tale of good verses evil.
From the Paper "This literary analysis presents the evils present in witchcraft within the story "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. By analyzing the characters within this tale, one can discover the various symbols of witchcraft that depict evils that Goodman Brown must overcome in the forest. In this manner, the aspects of symbolic witchcraft are related by the main characters opposing the Bible, which, in turn, depict the nature of witchcraft that abounds in the plot structure of Hawthorne's classic tale of good verses evil. Young Goodman Brown, the main character in Hawthorne's tale, must ultimately search for a greater faith. When he ventures into the forest, he meets his catechism teacher Goody Cloyse, but finds that her faith is challenged."
