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Critical Analysis Of Young Goodman Brown

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The Dark Forest of Ones Mind: A Journey inside the Subconscious
The human mind is both a fascinating and complicated system. Thousands of neurons firing away like workers in their cubicles at a crowded corporate office; producing complicated thoughts and feelings and emotions. Indeed this complexity of the brain is a powerful tool used by some of the greatest authors within the cannon of American Literature, particularly, Nathanial Hawthorne. Hawthorne crafted stories with tense pacing and dramatic events, but he also employed literary devices that brought to light the emotional complexities of his characters. In Young Goodman Brown (1832), Hawthorne depicts a Puritan young man who must suddenly leave his wife, Faith in the middle of the night, and venture out into the wilderness where he finds all of the members of his town and church seemingly worshipping the devil in the heart of the dark forest. The story, while seemingly about a young man getting lost in the forest or simply having a bad dream, seems to be something deeper in the eyes of Hawthorne. The story suggests that Goodman Brown’s trek into the forest represents his physical journey into the realm of his unconscious mind.
One of the ways in which the story shows Goodman Brown’s journey into his deepest and darkest thoughts is through the forest itself, with all of its vast darkness and uncertainty. The narrator asserts early in the story: “It was all as lonely as could be; and there is peculiarity in such a

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