Literary Motifs in “Young Goodman Brown”
A literary motif “is a conspicuous element, such as a type of incident, device, reference, or formula, which occurs frequently in works of literature” (Abrams 169). Incredibly, this one tale, “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, contains an array of familiar literary motifs (Axelrod 337).
First of all, the tale involves the common motif of a journey in quest of something. The young Goodman Brown, at the beginning of the story, takes leave of his wife, Faith, in order to journey into the woods where he keeps an appointment with the devil: "My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise.”
The journey continues circuitously through the narrow paths of the forest (“He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind.), involving encounters with the devil, Goody Cloyse, Deacon Gookin, the local minister and his wife Faith – all of whom have been on a journey into the deepest part of the woods to attend the annual coven or witch-meeting. After considerable misgiving regarding the journey, Goodman arrives at the end of the hike in the most remote and isolated part of the forest where he and Faith are to be baptized into the devil-worshipping group and thereby learn the evil secrets hidden in the hearts of everyone:
Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of th...
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...e such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
"Of the two, reverend Sir," said the voice like the deacon's, I had rather miss an ordination-dinner than tonight's meeting.
In conclusion, it is obvious that there is a proliferation of familiar literary motifs in “Young Goodman Brown.”
WORKS CITED
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Axelrod, Rise B. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” 1835. http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/goodman/goodmantext.html
Young Goodman Brown is about a young, newly wedded man who leaves his wife, Faith, and to go on a journey into the forest one night. Young Goodman Brown has an innocent and maybe even naïve soul and was looked upon by townspeople as a “silly fellow” (Hawthorne 83). He is accompanied by a mysterious, older man who is later on revealed to be the devil. As they are walking, Young Goodman Brown tries to turn back several times and at one point succeeds in getting rid of the devil. However, when he sees that even his wife has surrendered to the same evil path that he was on, he stops resisting and continues into the forest. He ends up at a witches’ sabbath where he sees familiar faces of people whom he previously looked up to for spiritual guidance; he also finds Faith there and becomes devastated. In the end, he cries out to resist the devil and then wakes up to find himself alone in the forest.
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We have all been faced with countless tragedies in our lives such as the loss of a loved one or a divorce, which have tested our personal strengths. Losing your mother takes a lot out of you as a person. While reading the book and realizing how close Strayed and her mother were, Lord only knows how empty she felt inside. Personal strengths are mostly defined as incidents, or knowledge of incidents that surround our day to day lives.With no experience or training, Strayed decided to up and leave her entire way of life only driven by blind will. Strayed stated, “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me” (Strayed 30). She went o...
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Young Goodman Brown is a story written by a well known Dark Romanticism writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne is known for his unique symbolism and dark writing.Part of Nathaniel Hawthorne's influence in writing Dark Romanticism is Hawthorns embarrassment of his family and the ways of his ancestor.While on one's journey towards faith and religion, they have to face it themselves and understand what they are doing. In Young Goodman Brown there was many symbolisms including Goodman Brown's wife, the snake staff,the forest and Faiths pink ribbon
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The Black Death started with a bacterium called Yersinia Pestis. “Yersinia Pestis, or known as pasteurella pestis, causes severe illness but more commonly death upon infection unless implanted with antibiotics,” (Sutyak). This bacteria spread quickly. ‘On average, bacteria can double every 4-20 minutes,” (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory). That means that when one person was infected, during the day 72 others could be infected if the rate was one person every 20 minutes. If the rate was one person every 4 minutes, there could be 360 people infected in a day. That rate is extremely horrendous rate of infection. Imagine if one person in your town got a terrible disease. Then the disease spread during one day. Three hundred sixty people infected in one day. That is exceedingly disgusting from my point of view. Now, lets take it broader. “Pandemics can affect 20% to 40% of the entire world's population”, (U.S Department of Health & Human Services). The Black Death caused 75 to 200 million people to die. That was a huge chunk of the population at the time. When all the people died, many places had little t...
In 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne published the tale of “Young Goodman Brown,” a tale that illustrates many configurations of symbolism used to leave the reader planting the pieces together through his characteristics of detail and imagery. Hawthorne’s prime analogy expressed throughout this tale is the loss of vulnerability and pureness when reaching maturity.
Clarice Swisher in “Nathaniel Hawthorne: a Biography” states: ”When Hawthorne called his stories ‘romances,’ he meant that they belong within the romantic movement that . . . . emphasize imagination and personal freedom” (18). It is the purpose of this essay to interpret the theme of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and determine where this “personal freedom” leads.
The main characters in Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown" are Goodman Brown, his wife Faith and the stranger who accompanies Goodman Brown in the forest. At the beginning of the story Brown is bidding his wife, Faith farewell at their front door. Taking a lonely route into the forest, he meets an older man who bears a fatherly resemblance to both Brown and the Devil. Later that night Brown discovers to his amazement, that many exemplary villagers are on the same path including, Goody Cloyse, a pious old woman who once taught him his catechism, but who readily shows that she certainly knew the Devil and practiced witchcraft. With Brown still confident that he could turn back, his older companion departs, leaving behind his curiously snakelike staff and fully expecting that Brown would follow.
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A great way of getting local citations is to sponsor a charity event. Charities typically list the names of their sponsors on their websites, which allows you to both get local citations and show your customers that you truly care about various causes. This is especially beneficial when choosing to sponsor charity events for animal shelters and rescue centers.
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