The Hypocrisy of Puritanism
Hawthorne sets “Young Goodman Brown” in the New England town of Salem, where the Puritans tried to create a religious society with strict morals and pious norms, but also where the infamous Witch Trials took place. The Puritans believed that some people are predestined by God to go to heaven, and that those people are identifiable by their morality and piousness; people cannot earn their way to heaven by performing good works, but if they…
read analysis of The Hypocrisy of PuritanismLosing Faith and Innocence
“Young Goodman Brown” is the story of how a young “good” man named Goodman Brown loses his innocent belief in religious faith. Goodman Brown’s loss of innocence happens during a vivid nightmare in which he ventures into a dark forest and sees all of the people he had considered faithful in his life gathered around a fire at a witches’ conversion ceremony with the devil presiding from on high. By the end of his journey…
read analysis of Losing Faith and InnocenceNature and the Supernatural
Hawthorne uses the forest to represent the wild fearful world of nature, which contrasts starkly with the pious orderly town of Salem. The threshold Goodman Brown finds himself perched upon in the opening lines of the story is not just between himself and his wife, Faith, but between the safety of the town and the haunted realm of the forest into which he ventures. Home is a safe harbor of faith, but the forest…
read analysis of Nature and the SupernaturalSaints vs. Sinners
The Puritan religion dictated that everyone on earth was either an evil sinner doomed to burn in hell or a pure earthly saint destined for heaven. To avoid being perceived as anything but wholly good, Goodman Brown (who, like his wife, Faith, is also “aptly named”) is obsessed with the idea of veiling his own sinfulness. Goodman Brown’s paranoia as he navigates the forest, dodging behind trees in terror of being outed as a…
read analysis of Saints vs. SinnersFamily and Individual Choice
Young Goodman Brown makes reference to many generations of the Brown family, both Goodman Brown’s ancestors and his descendants. Goodman Brown must choose whether to follow his ancestors’ example, for better or for worse, or whether to make his own decisions and break away from family tradition. The tragedy of the story is that he is unable to choose: he loses faith in following family tradition, but he can’t reject his family and start new…
read analysis of Family and Individual Choice