Nathaniel Hawthrone´s Goodman Brown

Formalist Response to Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown

Nathanial Hawthorne’s tale of Young Goodman Brown

The story is told from a third person, unknown narrators’ point of view. The narrator seems like a mostly trustworthy person, until the end of the story is reached. Is Young Goodman Browns journeying just a dream, or is something wicked happening the woods of Salem. Salem is historically the setting of the infamous witch trials of the 1690’s, and this is roughly when the story takes place. The story is an allegory, a story that has a hidden meaning, traditionally a moral one. However, because of the uncertainty of the events, there is not a straightforward meaning to what that moral is, or even if there is a moral at all. If the events of the story did happen, the moral of the story is that

Hawthorne’s tale is a perfect example of what Mikhail Bakhtin called unfinalizabilty, which states that it is impossible to ever know a person completely. There are elements of uncertainty throughout the whole story, the biggest and most obvious element is the ambiguity over whether or not the whole event was just a dream

This is seen first when Young Goodman Brown converses with the man in the forest about Browns father and grandfather. Young Goodman Brown is convinced they would be ashamed of him for his current journey, and would never have walked this path in their time. The mysterious man, who is later heavily hinted at as being the Devil himself, says he has walked with both these men, as well as several other very prominent members of the town. “Well said, Young Goodman Brown! I have been well acquainted with your family as with eve a one among the puritans (308).” This is further shown later when townspeople, the woman who...

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...ed a wild dream of a witch-meeting? Be it so if you will; but Alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown (314).” The narrator of the story leaves the ending open to interpretation; either Young Goodman Brown dreamed the whole ordeal, or the devil really did dance in the woods outside of Salam.

There is no evidence in the story that Goodman Brown ever slept in that forest. The only reference to dreaming comes at the beginning of the story, when the motives for Faiths warnings are briefly discussed by the narrator. Goodman Brown sees the worried look on his wife’s face as he is leaving, and believes she might have had a dream about his intentions that night. However, throughout the story, there are dreamlike elements to certain events in the forest. For example, the devil appears just around in bend in the road after Young Goodman Brown thinks of him.