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Young Goodman Brown - Ambiguities
While in actuality, this short story is an accurate historical reference to Hawthorne's Puritan ancestry and his great grandfathers' participation in the Salem witch trials, through the character of Brown, Hawthorne reveals his own journey of discovery, and its troubling impact upon him. Hawthorne uses the theme of darkness to cast light upon the even darker truth, and shows how the impact of discovering the truth can alter one's life forever.
Although in allegory Young Goodman Brown is married to his Faith, and although it is his Faith that warns him not to undertake his journey of discovery, he takes the journey regardless of warning and travels into the dark past as represented by thick woods where anything might be lurking. There, upon discovering the past, he brings it to light.
He finds that under the cover of darkness, those who are thought to be the most pious members of the community can be transformed into people capable of the worst evildoing. He discovers the human capacity for injurious deeds, and he discovers the duplicitous truth of the Puritan past where the accused and condemned were actually the innocent. The accusers, who believed themselves to be saintly and acting according to the Good Book, were the ones who were filled with evil.
Hawthorne uses the Puritan witch trials (including spelling variations of names of the accused taken from the trial transcripts) to demonstrate that those who are completely absorbed in self-righteous beliefs can easily lose sight of themselves. They can become completely unaware of their own degree of evilness. In the case of the Puritans, while claiming to be defending their towns from the devil they were unaware of how devilish they had become.
When the extent of the depravity of those known for their "especial sanctity" is learned, the impact upon Young Goodman (an allusion to youthful innocence) is life altering. Knowing the truth, in the morning he sees everything in a different light. He cannot look at those who hold themselves up as pious pillars of the community without remembering what he discovered in the past. Having made his discoveries, Brown emerges from his journey no longer young and innocent. He has lost all that he once believed in.
Young Goodman Brown: Faith -- the Wife In the Young Goodman Brown, the two important characters are the protagonist, Brown and his wife Faith. While Faith, the wife, has a small role to play yet her significance increases as we closely study her symbolic use in the story. The story revolves around a man's journey into the heart of darkness to discover the strength of his own faith. He considers himself
Young Goodman Brown In the story "Young Goodman Brown," much of the story is centered on Goodman Brown and his struggle to use his faith to suppress his evil impulses and his internal doubts. This struggle is undoubtedly a representation of some of the same struggles that Nathaniel Hawthorne must have faced within his own life in which he embraced the Puritan way of life and its beliefs. Given Hawthorne's background
As soon as that objective was achieved the whole theatrics was withdrawn. On the contrary it could well be nothing but his subconscious that expressed his own desire to see the world according to that perspective in which all the nice people embracing high standards of morality are all but faux. But it could be safe to assume that the whole episode in the forest was the figment of
Goodman's internal conflict was brought about by his realization that he was vulnerable and can easily succumb to the temptations of the devil. Being in the wilderness did not help Goodman prevent this conflict from happening within him, since the wilderness was obviously not a part of society but of nature, therefore, the wilderness only follows the laws of nature and not the laws of humanity. The wilderness acted as
Young Goodman Imagines Himself an Excessively Badman Young Goodman Brown will become a bitter and hopeless man, "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man," whose "dying hour was gloom," and who cannot even smile and be joyful with his own wife and children. This perpetual foul mood is attributed in the story to the ill effects of his "fearful dream." Indeed, at the story's
Although Lomax does admit his actions do influence his condition, Satan does still lure him more covertly. These two stories are, however, incredibly similar. In both cases, Satan poses as a man in order to lure the two characters into forgetting their faith and joining him in sin. Both Brown and Lomax have young brides who, despite their original virtue and faith, eventually help lead their husbands into Satan's arms.