Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown - Moral and Philosophical Considerations :: Free Essays on Young Goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown  Moral and Philosophical Considerations The terror and suspense in the Hawthorne story function as integral uses of the allegory that defines the storys theme. In allegory (a narrative containing a meaning beneath the surface unrivaled), at that place is usually a one-to-one relationship that is, one idea or object in the narrative stands for only one idea or object allegorically. A story from the Old Testament illustrates this. The pharaoh of Egypt fantasyed that cardinal fat cows were devoured by s flat lean cows. Joseph interpreted this dream as meaning that seven years of plenty (good crops) would be followed by seven years of famine. Young Goodman Brown clearly functions on this level of allegory ( time at times becoming richly symbolic). Brown is non just one Salem citizen of the late seventeenth century, but alternatively seems to typify mankind, to be in a sense Everyman, in that what he does and the reason he does it appear very familiar to mo st people, establish on their knowledge of others and on honest appraisal of their own behavior. For example, Goodman Brown, equivalent most people, wants to experience evil, not perpetually, of course, for he is by and large a decent chap, a respectably married man, a member of a church, but he desires to taste the forbidden fruit (have one last fling) before settling down to the business of existence a solid citizen and attaining the good life. He feels that he can do this because he means to retain his religious faith, personified in his wife, who, to reinforce the allegory, is even named Faith. But in order to encounter evil, he must part with his Faith at least temporarily, something he is either willing or compelled to do. It is here that he makes his fatal mistake, for evil turns out to be not some abstraction nor something that can be played with for a while and then put down, but the very pillars of Goodman Browns worldhis ancestors, his earthly rulers, his spiritual over seers, and ultimately his Faith. In short, so overpowering is the fact and the universality of evil in the world that Goodman Brown comes to doubt the existence of any good. By looking upon the very face of evil, he is transformed into a cynic and a misanthrope whose dying hour was gloom. Thomas E. Connolly, in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown An Attack on Puritanic Calvinism (American Literature, 28 November 1956, 370-375), has remarked that Goodman Brown has not lost his faith he has found it.