Archetypal Characters In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

The Puritan society, although pious and goodly within the idea of it, spurned many of its members for fabricated suspicions that eventually eroded the Puritan community. Hence, the archetypes within Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” emulate how an individual’s interpersonal relationships can easily crumble when a society’s culture is steeped within judgment. Carl Jung’s theory of individuation is the psychological process as one grows up and notices aspects of the self that set one apart from others. It also explains how one can project unconscious faults onto others more easily than we can accept them of ourselves. Thus, members of the Puritan community were more apt to cast judgment on others rather than looking to themselves for

The Devil, while acting as the shadow, represents the Devil within every human being. Hawthorne’s story illustrates how every person will encounter the Devil and there is a bit of evilness in everyone. By having Faith act as the anima, she reminds others that there is an epitomical image of goodness for every human to strive for. Faith, acting as the soul-image, begs Goodman Brown to not venture into the woods to bargain with the Devil. Nevertheless, the persona acts as the obverse of the anima since it arbitrates between the ego and the external world. Goodman Brown acts as the typical Puritan’s persona and demonstrates an example of how most of the condemning members of the Puritan community acted. Furthermore, by manipulating his persona to seem so much more pious than his neighbors, Goodman Brown ironically turns into a darker person and emulates the shadow more than the anima in his later days. By focusing so much on the sins of others, the Puritan culture crumbles and eventually evokes the worst between