Young Goodman Brown

A detailed Summary of Young Goodman Brown

"'Lo! There ye stand, my children,' said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its

despairing awfulness, as if his once angelis nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.

"Depending on one another's hearts, ye had still hoped, that virtue were not all a dream. Now ye

are undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again,

my children, to the communion of your race!'"

The above quotation from Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is of central importance in analyzing the attitudes and

ideas present throughout the story, though in a curious way. The quotation (and the story itself), on first reading,

seem superficially to portray a central character's loss of faith and the spiritual tragedy contained therein. Rereading,

however, reveals a more complex set of ideas, ones which neither fully condemn nor condone the strictly constructed

dichotomy of good and evil that Hawthorne employs again and again over the course of goodman Brown's journey.

I think Hawthorne had much more in mind than a mere outline of good and evil. His primary struggle in Young

Goodman Brown seems to be less with faith vs. the faith

Goodman Brown's abrupt, gloomy death seems to reinforce the latter idea. Had Hawthorne been concerned with

more pliable attitude toward human thinking? Is he describing the hypocrisy which undoubtedly exists in the world

and then dies a lonely, tormented death. It's the perfect Christian fairy tale nightmare, and Hawthorne seems to have

Calvinism (p 394). Hawthorne's attitudes are no doubt partially a reaction to the Puritan mores of the era. There was

Or is he more concerned with the journey itself than with any specific message or description of possible outcomes?

The sad, solemn figure's proclamation that "evil must be your only happiness" is similar in its simplification to the

Approximate Word count = 1301
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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