The Dual Nature of Man in Young Goodman Brown Essay -- Young Goodman B

The Dual Nature of Man in new-fangled Goodman BrownIn Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne tells the story of one mans loss of faith in the human race. As Goodman Brown travels into the woodwind one night, he is sees the innermost secrets and desires of the people he once dictated upon a pedestal. He sees that humans are evil by nature, and this causes him to hurt faith in his fellow man. By viewing the story as an all selfry, the journey into the woods is associated with the Puritan concept of justification. The Puritans viewed justification, or the means by which one receives the salvation of Christ, as a psychological journey into the hellhole (or evil) of the self (Soler). Goodman Brown fails to complete his process of individuation because he cannot answer to terms with the dual Apollonian and Dionysian nature of his being.The Puritans believed that to be justified, one must let go of his worldly dependence and strive to live a life free of sin (Soler), making the story an allegory in its treatment of the nature and consequences of the Puritan belief in the total criminality of man (Waggoner 250). This would have had an impact on the development of the psyche, as the ego struggled to repress certain instincts that the superego deemed as sinful based on victorian beliefs.To understand the effects that Puritanism has on the psyche, one must also get that Puritanism depraved the human spirit of both Dionysian and Apollonian instincts. Even though it favored Apollonian in the sense that it buy ated a distancing from the world, it does not support the development of the individual, which is associated with Apollo. Puritan Society frowned upon expressing ones individuality (that is why, similarly the obvious dishonor, wea... ... The Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 1995.Soler, Angie. The Journey Into the Puritan Heart Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown Dr. Jim Wohlpart. American Literature and Analysis Web Site. Florida disconnec tedness Coast University. 1998.Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories. Appelbaum, Stanley, ed. Dover scrimping Edition. General Publishing Company, Canada. 1992.Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Revised Edition. Twaynes United States Authors Series. G.K. Hall & Company. Massachusetts. 1983.Foster, Jr., behind Burt. Heirs to Dionysus A Nietzschean Current in Literary Modernism. Princeton University Press. New Jersey. 1981.Male, Roy R. Hawthornes sad Vision. University of Texas Press. Austin. 1957.Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne A Critical Study. Harvard University Press. Massachusetts. 1955.