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Symbolism and allegory in nathaniel hawthornes young goodman brown
Analysis of short story young goodman brown by nathaniel hawthorne
The character of young goodman brown
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"`Lo! there ye stand, my children…” In the story "Young Goodman Brown", the prominent theme is that everyone has a dark side. As the dark figure clearly states, "Evil is the nature of mankind." Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" describes the hunger for virtue people of the early 19th century had, and how that virtue is all but a dream, through his tone and imagery.
As the passage begins, the first word read is "Lo!" An audience reads this word, and immediately gets the feeling that someone of a supreme nature or of high power is speaking. "...[T]here ye stand, my children," again allows the reader to see that some sort of father figure is about to speak to his children. The next several words describe the harsh tone of how this "figure" is speaking. This dark tone coming from words like "deep and solemn" easily sets up how the figure is speaking to his children. However, the reader receives a glimpse of a past good in this devilish character. When Hawthorne writes that the figure speaks with "almost sad...dispairing awfulness," the audience sees that the dark creature at one time might have not been so melancholy, "as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race." This thought runs parallel to some form of biblical text where Lucifer, an angel of God, is damned out of heavens to become the ruler of Hell. Hawthorne's background of a religious family probably makes him knowledgeable about these histories. The phrase brings about a sense of the dark figure's previous peaceful past--how the figure was once a good soul, virtuous with the rest of the audience souls. The passage gives a down tone when it describes the feeling of the dark figure. One might also get a sense of the imagery the Hawthorne accomplishes when describing the distraught figure. The audience can see the creature talking with his deep dark voice, and the fear of what really is true about our society. The figure remembers being of an "angelic nature," how he too had a virtuous persona. Unfortunately, as the context of the passage conveys, there is a harsh reality that virtuous world is just a myth. This is against all of Young Goodman Brown's beliefs that there is no evil if one sets their mind to it, but the figure proves Brown very wrong.
The use of symbolism in "young Goodman Brown" shows that evil is everywhere, which becomes evident in the conclusion of this short story. Hawthorne's works are filled with symbolic elements and allegorical elements. "Young Goodman Brown" deals mostly with conventional allegorical elements, such as Young Goodman Brown and Faith. In writing his short stories or novels he based their depiction of sin on the fact that he feels like his father and grandfather committed great sins. There are two main characters in this short story, Faith and Young Goodman Brown. "Young Goodman Brown is everyman seventeenth-century New England the title as usual giving the clue. He is the son of the Old Adam, and recently wedded to Faith. We must note that every word is significant in the opening sentence: "Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street of Sale, Village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young w2ife.
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:31) The manner in which Goodman Brown based his faith is a very good example of how not to base one’s faith. The strength of Goodman Browns faith was based on his wife’s faith, his trust in his neighbors, and his personal experiences. The strength of one’s faith is one of the most important aspects of any person, and it is especially important in the story Young Goodman Brown.
Faith is accepting what you are taught or told without trying to prove or disprove it, rather than discovering it through experience. Those who believe in God have faith. It has not been proven that God exists; similarly, it has not been proven that humans are kind, honest, and good by nature. Young Goodman Brown is a character in "Young Goodman Brown," who leaves his known world in Salem village and travels an unknown road in a dark forest in the middle of the night, a common motif in literature better known as the Hero's journey, and is faced with obstacles. He must decide if he will carry his journey out till the end, or turn back and not learn the truth about himself and other humans.
“Lead me not into temptation. I can find the way myself,” Rita Mae Brown once remarked. Temptation is all around, no matter where one might be, there is no use in going out and looking for it. For some individuals, the enticement is so strong that it has caused them to break away from the ties that once bound them to their upbringing, such as faith, but for others, it has brought them even closer to their faith. There is no questioning whether or not one would be strong enough to deny the temptation in order to remain pure, but, rather one’s faith is strong enough to go through the test that has been taking place since the very beginning when Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden of Eden. Tone and symbolism throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
In "Young Goodman Brown," Nathaniel Hawthorne, through the use of deceptive imagery, creates a sense of uncertainty that illuminates the theme of man's inability to operate within a framework of moral absolutism. Within every man there is an innate difference between good and evil and Hawthorne's deliberate use of ambiguity mirrors this complexity of human nature. Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, is misled by believing in the perfectibility of humanity and in the existence of moral absolutes. According to Nancy Bunge, Hawthorne naturally centers his story upon a Puritan protagonist to convey the "self-righteous" that he regards as the "antithesis of wisdom"(4). Consequently, Young Goodman Brown is unable to accept the indefinable vision of betrayal and evil that he encounters in the forest. The uncertainty of this vision, enhanced by Hawthorne's deliberate, yet effective, use of ambiguity, is also seen in the character of Faith, the shadows and darkness of the forest, and the undetectable boundaries that separate nightmarish dreams from reality.
The above quotation from Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is of central importance in analyzing the attitudes and ideas present throughout the story, though in a curious way. The quotation (and the story itself), on first reading, seem superficially to portray a central character's loss of faith and the spiritual tragedy contained therein. Rereading, however, reveals a more complex set of ideas, ones which neither fully condemn nor condone the strictly constructed dichotomy of good and evil that Hawthorne employs again and again over the course of Goodman Brown's journey.
Haralson, Eric, and Kendall Johnson. "Daisy Miller." Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Feb. 2014 .
Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes symbolism throughout his short story Young Goodman Brown to impact and clarify the theme of good people sometimes doing bad things. Hawthorne uses a variety of light and dark imagery, names, and people to illustrate irony and different translations. Young Goodman Brown is a story about a man who comes to terms with the reality that people are imperfect and flawed and then dies a bitter death from the enlightenment of his journey through the woods. Images of darkness, symbolic representations of names and people and the journey through the woods all attribute to Hawthorne's theme of good people sometimes doing bad things.
Most of the works can be analyzed by one of the three critical approaches: traditional, formalistic or psychological approach. When it comes to Young Goodman Brown (by Nathaniel Hawthorne), I think that psychological approach is the best one to use. The story is all about the three components of our unconscious (id, ego and superego) and the constant battle among them.
Jack, R. E., Blais, C., Scheepers, C., Schyns, P. G. & Caldara, R. (2009). Cultural confusions show that facial expressions are not universal. Current Biology, 19 (18), pp. 1543--1548.
People have always gone out of their way to obtain what they desire in their life. Whether this obsession is out of greed or true necessity, a person will go to great lengths to achieve it. In the novel, The Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, we find this trait present within the characters: Lucentio, Hortensio, Gremio, Petruchio, and Katherine. Each of these characters has their own motivation behind their actions in this story.
In February 1957, a new flu virus came about in Asia officials predicted another pandemic. Health officials monitored flu outbreaks until a vaccine could be produced. Unfortunately the elderly immune system was too weak to fight off the flu about 69,800 people died from this majority were the elderly. A little over ten years after the second outbreak had happened in 1968 health officials detected the United States ano...
complication. About 90 percent of the animals that are being tested are not even counted in the U.S. statistics alone without taking other countries into account
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