The Deeper Meanings of Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown Essay

on an "errand". Goodman Brown says to his "love and (my) Faith" that "this one

Goodman Brown represents every man, who has struck a universal bargain with Satan. Initially he is young, naïve, and immature and fails to understand the gravity of the step he has taken

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" the use of symbols contributes to the development of the story's plot. Symbolism is used as a means to uncover the truth about the characters. The author, in an attempt to manifest the moral aspects of his society, uses many kinds of symbols to support his points.

Goodman Brown stated in the story that he came from a line of good Christian men, so he most likely knows the difference from wrong and right. In the eyes of the Puritans, his first shortfall is when he decides to take the journey in the woods. On this journey, he falls more and more into temptation. Every time he said he was going to turn back to go home, the older man always convinced him to keep going deeper into the woods. Humans have the freewill to decide what they want. Goodman Brown could have easily resisted temptation and went back home but the temptation to go deeper into the woods kept him from doing so. As the good Christian man, he is presented to be, Goodman Brown knows should not have be taking a journey into the wood. Even Faith, his wife warned him not to go into the woods because she knew something was not right about it. We as human being imperfect, we sin daily even the righteous make mistakes that cause them to fall short of their religious beliefs.

The dialogue, action and motivation revolve about the characters in the story (Abrams 32-33). It is the purpose of this essay to demonstrate the types of characters present in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” whether static or dynamic, whether flat or round, and whether protrayed through showing or telling.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne introduces Goodman Brown, who doubts himself and reiterates his false confidence to himself repeatedly. His struggle between the evil temptations, the devil, and the proper church abiding life, is a struggle he does not think he can handle. This story is about a man who challenges his faith in himself and in the community in which he resides. Goodman Brown must venture on a journey into the local forest, refuse the temptations of the devil, and return to the village before the sunrise.

Symbolism is a literary technique that is used to clarify the author's intent. Sometimes it is used to great effect, while other times it only seems to muddle the meaning of a passage. In "Young Goodman Brown," Nathaniel Hawthorne uses objects and people as symbols to allegorically reveal his message to the reader.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” (repr. in Thomas R. Arp, and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 8th ed. [Fort Worth: Harcourt, 2002] 316) is a short story with strong Puritan influence. Puritanism is a religion demanding strict moral conduct and strong faith. Puritans held that Christians should do only what the Bible commanded. Analyzing “Young Goodman Brown” is dependant upon understanding the Puritan faith. The influence of the Puritan religion is vivid in literary elements such as setting, allegory, and theme.

     Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes symbolism throughout his short story Young Goodman Brown to impact and clarify the theme of good people sometimes doing bad things. Hawthorne uses a variety of light and dark imagery, names, and people to illustrate irony and different translations. Young Goodman Brown is a story about a man who comes to terms with the reality that people are imperfect and flawed and then dies a bitter death from the enlightenment of his journey through the woods. Images of darkness, symbolic representations of names and people and the journey through the woods all attribute to Hawthorne's theme of good people sometimes doing bad things.

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne provides historical, societal, religious, scientific and biographical contexts. The story is set in the period of the Salem Witch Trials in Puritan New England. The story describes Brown's journey into the depths of the forest, where he believes that he sees many of the members of his community, including his wife Faith, attending a satanic ceremony. The narrator implies that Brown may be sleeping, but either way the experience was real. It affected Brown very much. The story is often read as Hawthorne's condemnation of Puritan ideology, as it proposes that Puritan doctrine could strain so much doubt that believers were doomed to see evil-whether or not it truly existed-in themselves and

   This essay will examine the main physical settings within Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” These are four in number and begin and end in the village of Salem.

    In "Young Goodman Brown," Nathaniel Hawthorne, through the use of deceptive imagery, creates a sense of uncertainty that illuminates the theme of man's inability to operate within a framework of moral absolutism.  Within every man there is an innate difference between good and evil and Hawthorne's deliberate use of ambiguity mirrors this complexity of human nature. Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, is misled by believing in the perfectibility of humanity and in the existence of moral absolutes. According to Nancy Bunge, Hawthorne naturally centers his story upon a Puritan protagonist to convey the "self-righteous" that he regards as the "antithesis of wisdom"(4). Consequently, Young

Thus when Goodman Brown leaves his "faith", it is not a departure from virtue, but a departure from deception.  To continue the allegorical analysis, Goodman Brown represents any naturally good human being caught in puritanism's web.  His journey through the evil forest is a journey into truth - into Hawthorne's reality of evil puritanism. He discovers that all the "pious" members of the community are actually evil, which, when interpreted directly, tends to suggest the true nature of puritanism.  And when these same upstanding puritans mingle with those of  "dissolute lives" and "spotted fame(384)," Hawthorne is suggesting that Puritans are on the same level as these individuals in that there actions are no less morally repugnant.  Brown's conversation with Satan suggests that Puritans have always unconsciously committed sin in their

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown illustrates vividly how society and culture can very much influence a person's sense of identity and belonging, or in the case of Young Goodman Brown the lack thereof. Being a Puritan man in a society that scorned the ways of witches and the devil, Young Goodman Brown grew up with a very pious outlook on life. Yet when it occurs to him to look at life a little bit differently, Young Goodman Brown receives more than he has bargained for. The journey he embarks on sheds a whole new light on his society that not only creates a struggle between himself and his fellow men but also one within himself.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" is full of symbolism throughout the story. Perhaps the most interesting examples of symbolism include the title character, Young Goodman Brown, as well as his wife, Faith, and the woods that Young Goodman Brown enters on his journey. Included are many allusions to Christianity and also to evil and sin. These references are expressed mainly through characters and settings in the story.