Young Goodman Brown

The short story “Young Goodman Brown” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses a moral allegory as his theme as well as hypocrisy, religion and finding the dark side of man. It talked about puritans, people who rejected the practices of the church of England and wanted the most simplicity religion as possible. They believed that the simpler their religion practices were, the purer they would be. His main point in the story is that if you don’t have faith in Christ, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. In this story, Faith was Young Goodman Brown’s wife, whom he leaves to go on this unknown journey. The character of Brown is supposed to represent a good character, Faith represents Christianity and the mysterious man in the forest represents the devil or evil in the world. Every detail in this story has a purpose and a meaning to what Hawthorne is trying to portray in his short story. This story also includes gothic literature because there was darkness, shadows and scary sounds. I came across an academic journal written by Jamil, “Carnivalesque Freedom in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown” where she talks about how Hawthorne uses specific languages and imagery to mock the Puritan values. She also talks about the main allegory for Hawthorne’s story, which is how a good man left his faith/Christianity to follow the evil but also tried resisting the evil. I chose this journal because Jamil talks about the characterization and allegory just as we discussed in class today. This have a better understanding of Hawthorne’s style of writing.

Works Cited
Jamil, S. Selina. “Carnivalesque Freedom in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown.” Explicator, vol. 65, no. 3, Spring2007, pp. 143-145. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=25960343&site=ehost-live.