Young Goodman Brown By Nathaniel Hawthorne

							9/3/2008   Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown"   1
      (1835) is a short story by American writer
       Nathaniel Hawthorne.

      The story takes place in Puritan New England,
       a common setting for Hawthorne's works.

      **Hawthorne’s common themes:
              the conflict between good and evil in human nature

              the problem of public goodness and private
               wickedness.
                              Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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      Theme 1 How the Puritans’ strict moral code
       and overemphasis on the sinfulness of
       humankind foster undue suspicion and
       distrust.


      Goodman Brown’s experience in the forest–
       whether dream or reality–causes him to lose
       his faith in others and die an unhappy man.
       Note the last words of the story: “They carved
       no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his
       dying hour was gloom.”
                      Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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      **Theme 2 The realization that evil can infect
       people who seem upright.


      **Theme 3 One man’s virtue is another man’s
       sin, and vice versa.




                      Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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    Goodman: Husband or master of a household.

    Goody: (1) Housewife, especially an elderly one, of
     a lower class; (2) any lower-class woman; (3)
     housewife or mistress of a household.

    King William (Paragraph 13): William III, king of
     England from 1689 to 1702.

    Wot'st: (Paragraph 15): Know.


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    King Philip (Paragraph 18): Nickname of the
     Wampanoag Indian chief Metacom.
     Maltreatment of Indians by whites provoked him
     into waging what came to be known as King
     Philip's War against New Englanders in 1675-1676.
     His defiance instilled fear in the white inhabitants
     of New England.
    Lecture-Day (Paragraph 21): Weekday on which a
     sermon was given.
    E'en Go Thy Ways (Paragraph 25): Just (righteous)
     be thy ways.

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    Cinquefoil (Paragraph 32): Flowering plant of the
     rose family that has white, red, or yellow petals.

    Wolf's Bane (Paragraph 32): Wolfsbane, a
     poisonous plant.

    Devil's Staff (Paragraph 36): The narrator says, "So
     saying, he threw it [the staff] down at her feet,
     where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the
     rods which its owner had formerly lent to the
     Egyptian magi." This passage alludes to verses 8-12
     in Chapter 7 of the Bible's Book of Exodus.
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   Goodman Brown: Recently married Puritan who
    lives in Salem in the 1600's. He believes in the
    goodness of the townspeople until he sees many
    of them attending a witches’ sabbath in the
    forest. Goodman is a title equivalent to Mister.

   Faith: Goodman Brown’s wife.




                    Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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    The Devil Figure: Mysterious man who meets
     Goodman Brown in the forest and accompanies
     him part way to the witches’ sabbath, where
     Brown is to be inducted into an evil brotherhood.

     Fellow-traveler: He is “a likeness or part or
     ancestor of Brown himself”. “This man is, of
     course, the Devil, who seeks to lure the still
     reluctant Goodman to a witch-meeting. In the
     process he progressively undermines the young
     man’s faith in the institutions and the men whom
     he has heretofore revered”.
                     Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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   Minister: Church leader who leads Goodman
    Brown to the unhallowed baptismal altar in the
    forest.

   Deacon Old Gookin: Salem Churchman who
    attends the witches' sabbath.

   Goody Cloyse: Teacher of cathechism who
    attends the witches' sabbath.



                    Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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   Goody Cory: unhanged witch

   Martha Carrier: who had received the devil's
    promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
    she! Salem resident, described as a "rampant hag,"
    who attends the witches' sabbath. The devil had
    been promised her that she would be the queen of
    hell. With Goody Cloyse, she leads Faith to the
    unhallowed baptismal altar.

   Powwows: Indian medicine men who attend the
    witches' sabbath.
   Various Townspeople
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    Salem village- a town northeast of Boston in the
     Massachusetts Bay Colony

    Takes place around the time of the Salem witch
     trials, held in the spring and autumn of 1692,
     (twenty innocent women and men were found
     guilty of witchcraft and executed).




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      "Young Goodman Brown" tells the story of a
       Puritan man who loses faith in humankind
       after he thinks he witnesses his wife and
       respected members of his town participating in
       a Black Mass.

      His experience dooms him to a life of gloom
       and mistrust.



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                                 Faith is Young
                                  Goodman Brown’s
                                  wife

                                 Faith pleads with her
                                  husband not to go

                                 She wears a pink
                                  bow

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   Allegory centering on the temptation everyone
    faces and on the human tendency to prejudge
    others on insufficient evidence.

   Allegory: the staff of Brown’s companion is being
    linked with the opponents of Moses and of the
    God of Israel. . . .



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   “The young man has the vulnerability of youth
    and, having newly yielded to the persuasions of
    the Devil, he has been led step by step to mistrust
    all he had believed in”.

   “Since Brown never masters the lessons Goody
    Cloyse tried to teach him, he cannot fit
    spiritually, emotionally, or psychologically into
    his own society”



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    “My Faith is gone!” cried he,
     after one stupefied (bewildered)
     moment. “There is no good on
     earth; and sin is but a name.
     Come, devil! for to thee is this
     world given.”

    “Faith! Faith!” cried the
     husband. “Look up to Heaven,
     and resist the Wicked One!”

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    Corruption, the older gentleman explains, is
     rampant in Puritan New England; even the
     highest levels of government and religion include
     the devil in their “godly” law and decision-
     making.




                      Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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     This point is further solidified as Young
      Goodman Brown comes across his “moral and
      spiritual advisor” Goody Cloyse on the path
      ahead of him. Not wishing to be seen by the old
      Christian woman who taught him his
      catechism, he implores his older companion to
      find an alternative route so that he may avoid
      her sight and his own guilt. The older
      gentleman acknowledges Goodman’s decision
      but proclaims that he will “keep the path


                     Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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      Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the
       forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a
       witch-meeting?




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    Metaphor “the many hints of Brown’s
     unconscious fascination with evil are
     communicated, but Hawthorne recognizes that
     our waking life and the life of dreams are bound
     up together--that life is like a dream in its
     revelation of terrifying truths.

    ***His point is that the truth conveyed in the
     dream--that faith may betray us--is also a truth
     of waking experience”.
                        Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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      At first he thought he heard her voice. When he
       started looking for her, he saw the ribbon
       hanging in the tree. This is when he realized his
       wife was also on her way to the meeting and he
       cried, "My Faith is gone!"




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   · Forest – a place of evil or temptation

   · Faith – both Brown's wife, who is pure and
    sweet, and his religious faith

   · Young Goodman – an implication of naïveté,
    piety, goodness, and righteousness.

   · Pink ribbon – child-like innocence and
    femininity

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    1. “The ribbons are in fact an explicit link between
     two conceptions of Faith, connecting sweet little
     Faith of the village with the woman who stands at
     the Devil’s baptismal font.
     Part of her adornment of dress, and they suggest,
     rather than symbolize something light and playful,
    “These ribbons . . . are an important factor in the
     plot, and as an emblem of heavenly faith their
     color gradually deepens into the liquid flame or
     blood of the baptism into sin”
     “The pink ribbons that adorn the cap which Faith
     wears . . . are a badge of feminine innocence.”
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    The Forest as Eden - Goodman Brown appears to
     represent human beings confronted with
     temptation (Adam and Eve)

    Primordial Symbols
     Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
     theorized that all humans share certain inborn
     impulses and concepts residing in the mind at the
     unconscious level. = Dark forests (like the one in
     "Young Goodman Brown") with danger,
     obscurity, confusion, and the unknown or with
     evil, sin, and death
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      The last few lines of the story tell us this. The
       very last line says that "his dying hour was
       gloom".

      His life was miserable from the time he came
       out of the forest after attending the meeting.

      Note the last words of the story: “They carved
       no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his
       dying hour was gloom”
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    A. Personification,
    B. Metaphor
    C. Homonym
    D. Foreshadowing

      Foreshadowing- providing clues to the reader
       to suggest future events



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      https://www.ptc.edu/martin_l/english102po
       werpoint.htm




                    Mrs. Billet Hawthorne's "Young
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      http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz.cfm?qid=
       202884
      http://www.iep4u.com/state/part1eng11.htm
      http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/quiz
       /themequiz.htm




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