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Character Damnation

Character development is an important aspect of short stories, and both the main characters in Paul’s Case and Young Goodman Brown evolved dramatically as their stories unfolded. Paul’s Case is a coming to age novel written by Willa Cather, which tells the story of Paul, a troubled teenager, as he struggles with his environment. Young Goodman Brown is a Puritan novel written by internationally acclaimed author Nathaniel Hawthorne that illustrates one incident a young man named Young Goodman Brown experienced that changed his perception on humanity forever. As each story progressed, both Paul and Goodman Brown went through life-changing events that completely destroyed their visions of the world. Both novels are written in third person omniscience, so we can comprehend what each character is experiencing and the emotions they are going through during these incidents. Paul’s suicide and Goodman Brown’s misanthropic transformation exemplified them as dynamic characters, as both proved to be completely different persons at the end of their stories.

Young Goodman Brown goes through a fundamental transformation in Young Goodman Brown, as he loses his faith in humanity through one surreal experience he encounters. At the beginning of the novel, Goodman Brown is a God-loving Puritan who lives with his beloved new wife, Faith, in the town of Salem. He is on an unknown errand, and travels into the woods in the middle of the night. Goodman Brown meets up with a shady companion, and together they travel deeper into the woods, where they witness a satanic gathering containing the minister, priest, Indians, and everyone in town. Goodman Brown sees Faith being inducted as a newest member of this satanic cult, and screams f...

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...ultimately led to her downfall. Just like how Young Goodman Brown sees people around him as damned sinners, Ofelia sees herself from a fairytale world, and her erratic behavior leads Captain Vidal to fatally shoot her. We can argue that both characters are “damned” because of their inability to see reality. Ironically, both Young Goodman Brown’s and Ofelia’s downfall come from their belief in a higher power, and we can conclude that their change in character is produced by their struggle within themselves. Paul’s downfall is caused by his struggle with his environment, as it constantly prohibits him from doing the things he truly loves, which eventually kills him. Both Willa Cather and Nathaniel Hawthorne successfully created dynamic characters, as each main character was led to their damnation by a summation of events that changed them for the worse.

By Samuel Mao