Absence of Absolute Good or Absolute Evil in Hawthornes...

Absence of Absolute Good or Absolute Evil in Young Goodman Brown Lo! There ye stand, my children, said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelis nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. Depending on one anothers hearts, ye had still hoped, that virtue were not all a dream. Now ye are undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race! The above quotation from Hawthornes 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†¦show more content†¦Hawthornes sense of irony and sarcasm is well illustrated in an episode like goodman Browns loss of his wife, Faith. Brown experiences several points in the forest where he wants to stop, yet he always continues, because he still has Faith. When a pink ribbon flutters down to him, however, he goes half-mad and continues on to the communion, now believing himself Faithless. Hawthornes use of more easily interpreted incidents and symbols like these only reinforce the idea for me that this is a story about much more than easy, clear divisions of human belief and behavior. I think Hawthorne knowingly used symbols which are slightly amusing in their simplicity because he is commenting, again, on the journey itself. His irony says that this is anything but an easy journey that starts out at dusk, made by a man with a wife named Faith, who meets witches in the woods and witnesses the totally corrupt nature of all humanity and then dies a lonely, tormented death. Its the perfect Christian fairy tale nightmare, and Hawthorne seems to have used it for exactly this reason: the journey itself is never so easy. When Brown returns to his town and sees the entire community involved in perfectly hypocritical activities as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening, I get the sense that Hawthorne is yet again suggesting thatShow MoreRelatedSymbolism and Allegory in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown Essay2297 Words   |  10 Pages   Ã‚   The main characters in Hawthornes story Young Goodman Brown are Goodman Brown, his wife Faith and the stranger who accompanies Goodman Brown in the forest. At the beginning of the story Brown is bidding his wife, Faith farewell at their front door. Taking a lonely route into the forest, he meets an older man who bears a fatherly resemblance to both Brown and the Devil. Later that night Brown discovers to his amazement, that many exemplary villagers are on the same path including, GoodyRead More Comparing the Use of Light and Dark by Melville, Poe, and Hawthorne3135 Words   |  13 Pageslikely the absence of it, we can gain some insight into what these subversive romantics consider to be the truth of humanity. Hawthorne uses this technique to its fullest; however, it is also very obvious in the stories of Poe and Melville. All of these authors have something to say about what they perceive as the breakdown of man and society - and they often clue us in by using differing de grees of light. The presence of darkness and light is probably the most apparent in Hawthornes pieces,Read MoreANALIZ TEXT INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS28843 Words   |  116 Pagessavage instincts concealed beneath his civilized English veneer. Most plots, it should be noted, contain more than one conflict. In some cases, however, these multiple conflicts are presented in a way that makes it extremely difficult to say with absolute certainty which one is the most decisive. It should be noted as well that the conflict of a story may exist prior to the formal initiation of the plot itself, rather than be explicitly dramatized or presented in an early scene or chapter. Some conflicts