Young Goodman Brown Essay Research Paper The

Young Goodman Brown Essay, Research Paper

The short narrative? Young Goodman Brown? by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a narrative of a adult male, Goodman Brown, who comes to happen out that the people he surrounds himself with are non perfect. During a journey proving his religion, a traveller, the Satan, is able to utilize Brown? s naivety against him. After the Satan has his manner with Goodman Brown? s head, Brown is ne’er once more able to swear even his married woman, who is competently named Faith, allow entirely anyone else. Brown? s position on humanity at that place on is one of fraudulence. This narrative has legion associations with symbolism including the narrative of Goodman Brown himself, his married woman Faith and her pink threads, the traveller he meets, and the journey he takes.

Goodman Brown? s name plays as a symbol in the narrative. His name Young Goodman Brown makes mention to him as being a immature and a good individual. Then Hawthorne gives him such a common last name that it relates him to any and everybody. The thought that it would be anyone or everybody symbolizes that it was a mention to all society. In malice of his name, there is no cogent evidence that Goodman Brown was of all time a good individual at all. Throughout his whole journey in the wood, he ne’er makes the statement that he should halt because it is morally incorrect. Brown most likely lone resists during the ceremonial because he realizes that his wickednesss will be exposed.

Faith, Brown? s married woman and her pink threads are used as symbols throughout the narrative. Her pink threads symbolize her young person, artlessness and pureness, and her name symbolizes her hubby? s childlike spiritualty at the beginning of the narrative. The name Faith is symbolic of Brown? s lost hope. When he says, ? My love and my Faith, ? he is utilizing his married woman as a symbol and is truly mentioning to his love and religion in God. He goes on to state? this one dark I must loiter away from thee. ? He means that he must portion from his religion in God to transport on with his journey. He besides says to the Satan, ? Faith kept me back awhile? and is doing mention to a higher being that is seeking to maintain him from doing his journey by detaining it. When Brown finds the pink thread that his married woman was have oning lying in the wood he says, ? my religion is gone? that is mentioning to himself as losing his religion in God. This quotation mark has multiple significances because after seeing all the pious and reverent figures of his town turned to evil he has lost his religion in the all the dwellers of his universe except his Faith and now they? ve got her excessively. If he can believe that his married woman can hold this secret presence of evil inside her, there is no hope for anyone else to derive his trust. Brown tells himself that the Devil will non take clasp of his religion although he has to maintain reassuring himself.

The traveller is symbolic of the Satan and Goodman Brown? s dark side. When Goodman enters the dark wood it is as if the wood is a pallet where the Satan can paint images to overcast and allure the religion of Goodman Brown. In the wood he

meets up with a 2nd traveller, ? about 50 old ages old, seemingly in the same rank as Goodman Brown, and bearing considerable resemblance to him. ? The 2nd traveller is portrayed as the Satan. He carries with him a staff, ? which bore the similitude of a great black snake. ? Snakes of class signify the Satan, doing the reader think he represents a diabolic symbol. The staff, which looked like

a serpent, symbolizes the serpent in the narrative of Adam and Eve. The serpent led Adam and Eve to their devastation by taking them to the Tree of Knowledge, merely as Brown is being led to unfathomed cognition by the Satan, and in bend is being led to his devastation. Just like Adam and Eve, when Brown finds the? fountain of all wicked humanistic disciplines? his religion is exiled from him merely as Adam and Eve were cast from the garden. The devil tells him about how his gramps and his male parent had done all these atrociousnesss with the aid of the Satan. Upon hearing this Goodman Brown has lost religion in his male parent and gramps. The Satan so moves on to others that are important in Goodman Brown? s life. Goodman Brown is being made to believe that everyone is inherently evil and that their piety is merely a fa? fruit drink for their covert interactions with the Satan. He imagines himself seeing Goody Cloyse, and influential religious adviser that taught him his catechism frolicing with the Satan. He is seeing what he wants to see. The Satan is doing all his sub-conscious intuitions come alive in this venture into the dark wood. He is being made to surmise everyone, his gramps, male parent, the curate, Deacon Gookin, and even his married woman Faith. The devil utilizations Brown? s deficiency of religion, particularly in his married woman, against him, and Brown is so drawn in by the Satan he does non take attentiveness when he sees what is done to the subdivisions of the trees and to the staff the Satan is transporting.

The forest that Goodman Brown ventures into is a symbol of the trial of strength, bravery, and endurance. As Goodman Brown is about to go forth for his journey, the exchange between Faith and himself foreshadows the result of the journey. As he travels through the wood he knows he should travel back to his religion and Faith, but his captivation with evil compels him to travel on. He leaves his married woman after she asks him non to travel, and says believing out loud, ? After this one dark, I? ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven. ? Taking the dark drearing route into the forest symbolizes his act of? plumbing into the route taking to despair. ? The move into darkness gives the feeling of approaching danger. During the trip Brown must make up one’s mind for himself whether people are fundamentally good, evil, or both, and his journey into the forests parallels his journey into his psyche. Brown leads himself down a journey of wonder. It destroyed Brown? s ability to swear anyone of all time once more including his married woman.

The narrative as a whole symbolizes that the potency for evil resides in everybody. The remainder of Brown? s life is destroyed because of his inability to confront the truth of wickedness and unrecorded with it. Alternatively of courageously combating down the dangers of the wood and emerging a more mature individual, Goodman Brown emerges a destroyed adult male. The narrative, which may hold been a dream, and non a existent life event, planted the seed of uncertainty in Brown? s head, which him to lose his religion in his fellow adult male and leaves him entirely and down. His life ends entirely and suffering because he was ne’er able to look at himself and recognize that what he believed were everyone else? s mistakes were his every bit good, and this led to his isolation from the community. Brown was buried with? no hopeful poetry upon his gravestone ; for his deceasing hr was gloom. ? Enlightenment can impact great wisdom, but merely those heads, which are unfastened to having it. Goodman Brown was non.