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Internal Conflict In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” edited by Beverly Lawn, demonstrates a distressed man and his experience as he battles with his internal conflict between the attraction to evilness and goodness. Young Goodman Brown is an ordinary Puritan man who lives with his newlywed wife, Faith. He was on his way out of town for his “journey” despite his wife’s attempts in making him stay (1). Goodman Brown’s journey represented his potential for growth and maturity. However, his journey also represented his arrested growth. In every story, there is an expressed struggle or conflict. The conflict typically centers the story. There are two types of conflicts, external and internal. Internal conflict is the protagonist’s struggle with oneself. …show more content…

Goodman Brown realizes that his actions and motives are wicked and ungodly. Nevertheless, his internal conflict of his attraction to evilness wins, making him lose this battle. At this moment, Hawthorne shows how Goodman Brown begins to destroy his bond with things that mean the most to him, including his wife. No longer is he this ordinary and polite Puritan husband. He has now become this man who is lost, hiding a secret from everyone he knows in his village. This destroys his credibly as a “Young Goodman.” Hawthorne also implied how this could be a learning experience. Had Goodman Brown stayed and listened to Faith as she pleaded him to stay, he would not have a conflict with his internal …show more content…

His “blind faith” starts to come out of hiding. Following his departure from his wife and village, Goodman Brown was to meet a man in the forest and together they were to journey to the witch meeting. Goodman Brown was questioned for his tardiness and responded: “Faith kept me back a while” (2). This example of dramatic irony displays his uncertainty in proceeding with his attraction to evil. “Faith” is represented as an emotion here and not his wife. When Goodman Brown states that “Faith [held him] back,” he was talking about his blind faith towards goodness and God. Furthermore, another example in which Goodman Brown was attracted to towards goodness was when he found out he was not the only person from his village attending the witch meeting. Goodman Brown states to himself, moments after finding out this surprising news, the following:
“…they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husband like me. But, were I to go with thee how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture

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“Young Goodman Brown.” : An Annotated Bibliography “Young Goodman Brown” is a story about a man who challenges his faith in himself and in the community in which he resides. Gregory, Leslie. " The Text of Nathaniel Hawthorne 's "Young Goodman Brown". " American Literature Research and Analysis.

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When Faith had a dream of what had warned her of what is to be done that night, Goodman brushed it off. He spoke of how he would not go on, and that he needed to finish the journey to which he was on. Hawthorne shows how submissive and obedient Faith is by having her say nothing more to him. She respects his decisions, and even though she does not agree with the decision that he made, she will stand by his side no matter the consequences that would come to her.

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The short story concludes with Goodman Brown strolling through the village the morning after and seeing all the townspeople returning to their daily lives. The story of “Young Goodman” Brown shows personification, imagery, and allegory, Hawthorne expands his storytelling by using many literary devices. Personification gives the character’s life a fantastical view, it is what makes the short story falter from reality. A prime example is near the end when Hawthorne states, “Nature

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With his glorified view of people and occasional religious terminology, Goodman is depicted as a loving and loyal person through the use of diction. Hawthorne then uses imagery to develop Brown’s gradual descent into corruption. When Brown declares that “there is no good on earth” and how “sin is but a name” (6), the realization of mankind corrupts his pure mentality.

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During his journey of sin, Young Goodman Brown and the devil come upon Goody Cloyse, Young Goodman Brown's catechism teacher, and, still believing that she is a “pious and exemplary dame” Goodman Brown tries to stay away from the woman by pleading with the devil “I shall take a cut through the woods… being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with” (3). Because of Young Goodman Brown’s beliefs of her innocence, it is even more jolting to him when she “knows her old friend,” the devil, and speaks about stolen broomsticks, recipes including “the juice of smallage and cinquefoil and wolf’s-bane,” and even the same devilish meeting that Young Goodman Brown and his accomplice are to attend (3). With signs that all point to sin and witchcraft, Young Goodman Brown’s shock in saying “That old woman taught me my catechism” had “a world of meaning” as he cannot possibly believe that a woman known to be so holy and righteous in the community could be so evil within. As Goodman Brown moves past the shock of Goody Cloyse’s actions, he is exposed to the sins of the holiest members of their Puritan community, the minister and Deacon Gookin. While Goodman Brown shamefully “[conceals] himself within the verge of the forest… he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin” who speak of the same evil “meeting” as Goody Cloyse and even remark that “several of the Indian powwows” will even be present (4,5).

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Goodman Brown loses his faith when he sees that his leaders are devil worshippers which he believes from being shown by a stranger who is believed to be the devil. One example of this is when Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith to begin the journey, he was symbolically leaving his faith in God and entering a forsaken place where the devil lurked. In the story, Goodman Brown expresses when entering the woods “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow” ( Gardner, Janet E., and Nathaniel Hawthorne). This statement also signifies he left without regard for his faith in God and his fellow human race. However, it is when he exclaims “My faith is gone!”

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Through his use of symbolism and allegorical devices of the characters, such as Young Goodman Brown, Faith, the pink ribbons, and the old man’s staff, the reader is able to truly understand what point Hawthorne was trying to get across. Hawthorne effectively used ethos, logos, and pathos in “Young Goodman Brown.” When he uses the fact that he believed he inherited the guilt of ancestors for ethos, Goodman Brown seeking out evil in the world as pathos, and the fact that Goodman Brown’s ancestors participated in evil as logos, Hawthorne was able to most effectively demonstrate his Anti-Transcendentalist

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While there are as many possible interpretations of a work as there are readers, a reader should not have to go beyond a work to understand an author’s intentions for a work. They should be able to have a somewhat similar interpretation to the author’s intended interpretation, given that the author was successful in their rhetoric and stylistic devices. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s case with his short story “Young Goodman Brown”, one does not have to go far to understand what he wanted to achieve. Hawthorne was a master of societal criticism, symbolism, rhetoric, and narration. Hawthorne meant for his readers to feel conflicted and confused.

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Within the short story, Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are themes of sin, evil and faith. Nathaniel Hawthorne has not only written this short story. He has written other short stories called, The Minister’s Black Veil, and The Scarlet Letter. In Young Goodman Brown, there are problems of faith that arise. As a reader when following the short story, Young Goodman Brown, Goodman Brown thinks everyone is irreproachable in the beginning.

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Goodman Brown loses his faith in his humanity when evil prevails itself in many forms, leaving him to speculate the behavior and beliefs of everyone encircles around him. This story also contains similar Biblical characteristics of the sinful nature in man. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolism to define that wickedness exist in all humanity and nothing is the way it seems. The story begins with Goodman Brown and his wife named Faith bartering a goodbye kiss.

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From the beginning of the story, Hawthorne gives his audience a profuse amount of symbols that hint to who Goodman Brown is and what he will experience in the story. Several examples can be found in the first paragraph of the

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He respected his family religion, yet he chose not to agree and follow the lifestyle. Hawthorne’s life was still shaped by Puritanism. He reflected in many short stories the difficulties of the religion. Hawthorne was mandated to go to church, however his views on life were not the same as Puritans. Jerome Loving, a critical essay analyst reviewing “Young Goodman Brown,'' describes the short story as an “[s]ymbolic of the puritan fear of the Fall in the New World’

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, Young Goodman Brown, there are many themes, symbols, and motifs revealed in the work, but there are two themes that are exemplified more than any other. These two main themes include the weakness of public morals and the loss of innocence. When displaying the weakness of public morals, Nathaniel Hawthorne exposes how Puritan society’s emphasis on public morality consequently led to corruptness. When Young Goodman Brown decides to go into the forest and meet with the devil, he still hides when he recognizes prominent members of the Salem community, such as Goody Cloyse and Deacon Gookin. He is more bothered by the fact of how his faith will appear to those he knows than by the fact that he has decided

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According to Burgess and Roberts (2003) and Roberts and Burgess (2004), financial stress is a major issue concerning homelessness. Yates claims that “financial stress has been defined as a situation of having insufficient financial resources to meet basic requirements to maintain a reasonable standard of living.” A recent development in our country more or less has enhance people’s life expenditure. First and foremost, low wages and high rent are largely the reason why financial stress occur especially for those with family. They are going to endure insufficient money to pay for rent, household bills and even their daily expenses.

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His opening phrase in this scene is, “ “Faith kept me back a while” replied a young man, with tremor in his voice” (406). Although Goodman Brown’s conversation with his wife delayed him, he was referring to his faith in Puritan beliefs. In the beginning, he is uneasy with the idea of darkness and the unknown because that is all he has learned is to stay true to God. His faith is all he has known his whole life and deviating away from that ideal lifestyle is a foreign yet tempting idea. This is evident when he says, “ “Too far!

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