Nathaniel Hawthorne writes the short story “Young Goodman Brown” to examine the internal struggle of a young man to retain belief and faith in the good in the world amongst the discovery of evil in the world. Hawthorne carries a third-person narrative persona for the length of the story, with a dynamic protagonist to establish the allegorical treatment of innocence and sin. Hawthorne, with an equally horrified and admiring impression of the witch trials, modeled supporting characters after his own ancestors and the ‘witches’ that his ancestors had unjustly punished. Young Goodman Brown, the representation of youth and worldly innocence, with belief in people and faith in God, bids farewell to his aptly named wife, Faith, before traversing into
…show more content…
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. (175-176)
Making it finally to the ceremony, he sees holy church members, many of the town’s most honorable members as well as sinners and criminals in chorus of an evil hymn “which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more” (177) at an altar surrounded by four baking trees. Brown laments “it was strange to see that good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints” (177), there is no division between the good and the wicked, as there is in Salem, in the woods. He is then led together with a cloaked female figure, as converts, to the evil practice. At instruction from the devil’s speech, the cloaked woman is unveiled to be Faith at the announcement: “[Depending] upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race” (179).
His dream finishes unresolved, unknowing for sure whether Faith had succumbed to the evil
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. (175-176)
Making it finally to the ceremony, he sees holy church members, many of the town’s most honorable members as well as sinners and criminals in chorus of an evil hymn “which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more” (177) at an altar surrounded by four baking trees. Brown laments “it was strange to see that good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints” (177), there is no division between the good and the wicked, as there is in Salem, in the woods. He is then led together with a cloaked female figure, as converts, to the evil practice. At instruction from the devil’s speech, the cloaked woman is unveiled to be Faith at the announcement: “[Depending] upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race” (179).
His dream finishes unresolved, unknowing for sure whether Faith had succumbed to the evil