Young Goodman Brown1 Essay Example For Students

Young Goodman Brown1 Essay Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story that is thick with allegory. Young Goodman Brown is a moral story, which is told through the perversion of a religious leader. In Young Goodman Brown, Goodman Brown is a Puritan minister who lets his excessive pride in himself interfere with his relations with the community after he meets with the devil, and causes him to live the life of an exile in his own community. Young Goodman Brown begins when Faith, Browns wife, asks him not to go on anerrand. Goodman Brown says to his love and (my) Faith that this one night I must tarry away from thee. When he says his love and his Faith, he is talking to his wife, but he is also talking to his faith to God. He is venturing into the woods to meet with the Devil, and by doing so, he leaves his unquestionable faith in God with his wife. He resolves that he will cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven. This is an example of the excessive pride because he feels that he can sin and meet with the Devil because of this promise that he made to himself. There is a tremendous irony to this promise because when Goodman Brown comes back at dawn; He can no longer look at his wife with the same faith he had before. When Goodman Brown finally meets with the Devil, he declares that the reason he was late was because Faith kept me back awhile.This statement has a double meaning because his wife physically prevented him from being on time for his meeting with the devil, but his faith to God is psychologically delayed his meeting with the devil. The Devil had with him a staff that bore the likeness of a great black snake. The staff, which looked like a snake, is a reference to the snake in the story of Adam and Eve. The snake led Adam and Eve to their destruction by leading them to the Tree of Knowledge. The Adam and Eve story is similar to Goodman Brown in that they are both seeking unfathomable amounts of knowledge. Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they were expelled from their paradise. The Devils staff eventually leads Goodman Brown to the Devils ceremony, which destroys Goodman Browns faith in his fellow man, therefore expelling him from his utopia. Goodman Brown almost immediately declares that he kept his meeting with the Devil and no longer wishes to continue on his errand with the Devil. He says that he comes from a race of honest men and good Christians and that his father had never gone on this errand and nor will he. The Devil is quick to point out however that he was with his father and grandfather when they were flogging a woman or burning an Indian village, respectively. These acts are ironic in that they were bad deeds done in the name of good, and it shows that he does not come from good Christians. When Goodman Browns first excuse not to carry on with the errand proves to beunconvincing, he says he cant go because of his wife, Faith. And because of her, he can not carry out the errand any further. At this point the Devil agrees with him and tells him to turn back to prevent that Faith should come to any harm like the old woman in front of them on the path. Ironically, Goodman Browns faith is harmed because the woman on the path is the woman who taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser. The Devil and the woman talk and afterward, Brown continues to walk on with the Devil in the disbelief of what he had just witnessed. Ironically, he blames the woman for consorting with the Devil but his own pride stops him from realizing that his faults are the same as the womans. Brown again decides that he will no longer to continue on his errand and rationalizes that just because his teacher was not going to heaven, why should he quit my dear Faith, and go after her. At this, the Devil tosses Goodman Brown his staff (which will lead him out of his Eden) and leaves him. Goodman Brown begins to think to himself about his situation and his pride in himselfbegins to build. He applauds himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet his ministerAnd what calm sleep would be hisin the arms of Faith! This is ironic because at the end of the story, he can not even look Faith in the eye, let alone sleep in her arms. As Goodman Brown is feeling good about his strength in resisting the Devil, he hears the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin. He overhears their conversation and hears them discuss a goodly young woman to be taken in to communion that evening at that nights meeting and fears that it may be his Faith. Hamlet Revenge EssayThroughout the story, Brown lacks emotion that a normal person would have had. The closest Brown comes to showing an emotion is when a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew. The dew on his cheek represents a tear that Brown is unable to produce because of his lack of emotion. Hawthorne shows that Brown has no compassion for the weaknesses he sees in others, no remorse for his own sin, and no sorrow for his loss of faith. His lack of remorse and compassion condemns him to an anguished life that is spiritually and emotionally dissociated. This scene is an example of how Goodman Brown chose to follow his head rather than his heart. Had Brown followed his heart, he may have still lived a good life. If he followed with his heart, he would have been able to sympathize with the communitys weaknesses, but instead, he listened to his head and excommunicated himself from the community because he only thought of them asYoung Go odman Brown ends with Brown returning to Salem at early dawn and looking around like a bewildered man. He cannot believe that he is in the same place that he just the night before; because to him, Salem was no longer home. He felt like an outsider in a world of Devil worshippers and because his basic means of order, his religious system, is absent, the society he was familiar with becomes nightmarish. He comes back to the town projecting his guilt onto those around him. Brown expresses his discomfort with his new surroundings and his excessive pride when he takes a child away from a blessing given by Goody Cloyse, his former Catechism teacher, as if he were taking the child from the grasp of the fiend himself. His anger towards the community is exemplified when he sees Faith who is overwhelmed with excitement to see him and he looks sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting. Brown cannot even stand to look at his wife with whom he was at the convert service w ith. He feels that even though he was at the Devils service, he is still better than everyone else because of his excessive pride. Brown feels he can push his own faults on to others and look down at them rather than look at himself and resolve his own faults with himself. Goodman Brown was devastated by the discovery that the potential for evil resides ineverybody. The rest of his life is destroyed because of his inability to face this truth and live with it. The story, which may have been a dream, and not a real life event, planted the seed of doubt in Browns mind, which consequently cut him off from his fellow man and leaves him alone and depressed. His life ends alone and miserable because he was never able to look at himself and realize that what he believed were everyone elses faults were his as well. His excessive pride in himself led to his isolation from the community. Brown was buried with no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.Bibliography:Young goodman brown by nathaniel hawthorne