Jungian Perspective In Young Goodman Brown

In 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story called “Young Goodman Brown.” This story takes place in the woods of Salem Village, Massachusetts. The main character, Goodman Brown, walks into the forest one night and meets a number of town members participating in what seems like a witch ceremony. It changes his outlook on the village people. The entire short story takes place in one night and the morning after. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great grandfather served as a judge on the salem witch trials in 1692 and sentenced twenty five women to death. This is not how Hawthorne wanted to be remembered so he changed his last name from Hathorne to Hawthorne. Three of the characters in the story are based on three of the women that were accused of

“The answer from Jungian perspective is that Goodman Brown is in fact seeking himself his lost/unwanted parts, the psychic energies he keeps locked in the dungeon of the unconscious because they threaten to overwhelm his Calvinistic value system, which has no room for darkness, shadow, and “evil”” (Moores p 2). Goodman Brown goes into the forest late at night where the village is known for its darkness and witchcraft yet he claims he wants to stay away from the evil. That is his conscious part of his mind talking because he continues walking into the forest even when he sees different town people going to the ceremony. According to Jungian theory, there is such thing as a shadow which is, “the unwanted parts of himself that are too distressing to his Puritan ego-self and thus experienced as a projection outside as something other, threatening and devilish” (Moores p1). From this perspective, it would make sense that what happened in the forest wasn’t Goodman Brown’s choice, but instead, was his unconscious state or ‘shadow’ that was causing him to act. The shadow is viewing what he sees as evil in the world and what his beliefs view as evil. “Brown’s culture, of course, is Puritanism, and Hawthorne shows that what Brown experiences with the devil and with the ritual over which the devil presides clearly reflects the values that Puritans considered negative” (Predmore 254). For Goodman Brown to see all this in his Puritan Village it would make sense that it was a dream instead of having everything that the Puritans are against happen in their village during the