Hawthorne Examined: The Potential of the Wilderness in Young

A detailed Summary of Hawthorne Examined: The Potential of the Wilderness in Young

In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne depicts the title character traveling away from the confines of his Salem village, leaving "Faith," his aptly named wife behind, in order to make an encounter with "the other." Upon entering the wilderness, Brown's fears get the better of him:

"'There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,' said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him, as he added, 'what if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!'"(2187) Here the diction seamlessly casts the presence of Native Americans with the devil. There is also a sense of anticipation within these words, an assurance to himself that wild Indians and the devil are the other that he will soon be privy to see. However in this parable of disillusionment, Young Goodman Brown soon finds that the other, the evil knowledge that he is both drawn to and fears belongs to his fellow townspeople, to his wife. His travels end with finding them communing with the Native Americans in seeming devil-worship.

But irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people...there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes...Scattered, a

Brown is unable to accept that sinners and devout people of his town are in the dark woods communing with one another, when such a spectacle would never occur in the walls of Salem. However there is a hierarchy to this villainy, as he states that the Indian priests filled the "native forest with more hideous incantations" than any of his townspeople could muster. Interestingly, Hawthorne does not seem to side with Brown's view of the Indians, of the wilderness. Though Brown thought the woods were filled with the laughter of wild Indians, it is his presence that actually frightens the wilderness. Hawthorne paints Young Brown to be a figure of a veritable devil:

Although Native Americans do not play a major role in The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne does utilize them in the Puritan imagination as stereotypical figures of the heathen, magical healer, or as the dark unknown. Our first introduction to the Native American presence occurs in Chapter three, The Recognition, where Hester Prynne looks down from her state of pillory to see her long-lost husband in the custody of an Indian: "An Indian, in his native garb was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the English settlements that one of them would have attracted any notice..." (2266). Hester's thoughts give insight into the somewhat hospitable relationship between the Bostonian Puritans and the Native Americans. But by standing at the edge of the crowd, the Indian holding Chillingworth captive becomes a symbolic division between the Puritanical world and the unknown wilderness beyond. Inside the city of Boston, strict laws are upheld and morals are harshly enforced. Once in the wide expanse of the forest, laws seem to have no place, and the Native Americans represent the untamed mysterious nature of the wilderness. Additionally, the Native Ameri

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Approximate Word count = 1235
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English