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 beginning he does seem far more light-hearted than he will become. However, one might suggest that the seeds of his distrustful and stern nature are planted far earlier and that even from the beginning he is falling into such a mindset, for Young Goodman Brown has an excessive (one might even say gothic) perception of nature and evil which from the beginning inclines him to think the worst of the natural world around him and to fault people more harshly than they might deserve.
That Young Goodman Brown is well on his way to becoming an evil spirit of himself is evident from the beginning of the narrative. The point-of-view in this narrative is designed so that the reader sees the world through the young puritan's eyes, following only his perspective and his understanding of the surrounding town and forest. Goodman associated the devil with the wilderness outside Salem. As he goes farther and farther along the devil's path, he goes farther and farther away from civilization until at last he reaches an area with no more roads. The wilderness is made synonymous with immorality, and he falls into both. This indicates a deep fear of nature and an association of the natural physical world with evil. Yet the narrative's association of evil and danger with the physical world is not merely clear in the story arch but in the very language of the narrative.
Through-out the story, the wilderness Goodman walks through becomes increasingly personified. Nature becomes more anthropomorphized as he walks farther with the devil, and...
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
Therefore in the remarkably persistent debate over whether Young Goodman Brown lost faith in human redemption or not, which critics have apparently quarreled over for a century and a half now, this reading takes the side that Brown did in fact retain some core belief that human redemption was possible, or else he would not have been alienated, tried to save the girl or had a family. The resulting message
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
) Doubts enter Brown's mind on page 15, as he looks "up at the sky" (which of course is pitch black in the deep forest at night) and doubts whether there is a heaven. But he cries out that he will "stand firm" - so readers know he still hopes to be strong and resist what is happening to him. But this night is not about resistance: "The cry of grief,
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
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