Irony In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

1. The significance of the title is to demonstrate that the protagonist is a good person. That he wouldn’t do any actions to harm anyone in which is seen when he was having second thoughts of leaving his wife, Faith for the night by the look of her troubled face. Perhaps, the author named the story “Young Goodman Brown” in order to foreshadow his actions. The significance of his wife’s name is to show that there is still some faith and goodness in him left to overcome any negative influences. However, he chose to follow the negativity which affected his life drastically by having a “realistic dream” about a witch meeting where his wife, Faith was presented demonstrating how Goodman left his innocence behind for deviltry. Faith wants to motivate

The author used a dark humorous tone when writing this story because “dark” and “gloomy” feelings are frequently sensed throughout the story especially when Goodman enters the forest. Everything Goodman encounters is related to the devil or its evil actions. This distorts the author’s choice of title as “good” because soon Goodman is eventually converted and influenced by the devil and his actions. Some examples of irony are when his wife is the only thing keeping him close to Christian values yet when he leaves she converts and is influenced by deviltry.

3. The narrator enters at the beginning of the story by describing Goodman’s actions into entering his house and saying goodbye to his wife. The effect of having a narrator begin the story is providing context to the readers on what Goodman is going to do. The narrator also briefly describes his wife’s clothing to reveal her innocence as she wears a pink ribbon. As well, this provides the tone and atmosphere of the story right at the beginning allowing the readers to understand the context creating their own opinions based on aspects

Goodman wants to go back and be with his good, Christian wife; however the devil tells him that she converted to worship deviltry and that she will not be the same person Goodman left her as. Ultimately, his motive was to convert and worship the devil because his wife left the Christian values behind and changed into someone new. The stages that lead Goodman to a gradual disillusionment are that he was convinced that his wife had converted which changed his perspective of her. Several of the sinners he meets on the way are villagers that Goodman was once very close to but due to being “possessed” by demonic influences he can no longer trust