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Young Goodman Brown Analytical Essay

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Nathaniel's family history would set the stage for his story in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne's ancestor John Hathorne was a judge in the witch trials during the 1690s. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams originated from suppressed emotions in our subconscious. Reflecting Nathaniel's subconscious, the story of Young Goodman Brown explored Nathaniel's forbidden desire to seek out taboo curiosities. By interpreting his dreams, he's able to unlock his subconscious to reveal his deepest emotions and suppressed desires. Brown displays the characteristics of Freud's ego as he follows the righteous lifestyle of the puritans and rejects the devil's proposal of attending the meeting. The villagers that attended the witches' sabbath would portray the id traits as they ignore the righteous lifestyle and celebrate mocking the puritan church. They are set on fulfilling their desires rather than fit in with society. The town's godly puritan government symbolize freud's superego. Because he tries to link the way people should act to how they truly want to act, …show more content…

Once in the forest at the witch meeting, he begins to realize that the townspeople weren't as godly as they claimed to be. Coming to the woods at night, this introduced his curiosity towards evil and willingness to meet up with the “devil man”. As he came to the realization that those he perceived to be good and moral individuals were just sinners, he becomes betrayed and confused. He begins to criticize those he saw, labeling them as hypocrites and overlooks the fact that he himself had also chosen to go into the woods. From seeking out his curiosity and learning of others doing the same, he focused on other people’s flaws rather than his own. In ¨Young Goodman Brown,¨ the characters Young Goodman Brown and his wife Faith advance a plot illustrating the temptations of evil to recreate Salem’s Puritan

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In both stories Nathaniel Hawthorne offers a portrait of how he views puritan society by setting each story in a small Puritan village, and in “Young Goodman Brown” he shows his true contempt by setting the story about villagers conspiring with the devil in Salem, his childhood home. He portrays the villagers in each story as gossiping, in “The Minister's Black Veil” and as followers of Satan in “Young Goodman Brown”. These stories would not have the same impact or offer the in-depth look at Hawthorne they do if the stories were set elsewhere. The stories would then simply be an indictment of people in general without the added effect of Hawthorne’s personal disdain for the Puritans way of

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I founded interesting that the author noticed that the Salem village is the center of the witchcraft misbelief. By everything the evil noted in Goodman Brown; it makes sense that Hawthorne would use a Salem village for this story. In my reflection about the story, I realize that is a place where the events continuously happened because it has a different incidents or devices that are widely found in the literature and recognized as motifs appear. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "

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1872 Words | 8 Pages

Witchcraft and Satanic activity are prevalent in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works, including “The Scarlet Letter” and “Young Goodman Brown”. From Mistress Hibbins in “The Scarlet Letter” and the walk Goodman Brown takes with the devil through the forest in “Young Goodman Brown”, the satanic influence and witchcraft are shown. Some questions arise when delving deeper into the meaning of these influences. What did the Puritans believe about the evil capabilities of Satan and witchcraft? How willing would they have been to believe Hawthorne’s accounts?

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Ethan Hoopingarner 3/31/2023 Mrs. Manero AC English 2 The short story unit that we have been covering for the past couple of weeks features ambiguity as a central theme in all four stories. Especially in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “ Young Goodman Brown’s Brown” and “ The Wives of the Dead”, where ambiguity contributes to the complexity of the meaning of the stories. In “ Young Goodman Brown,” ambiguity develops from the beginning of the story, when Goodman Brown takes a journey through the eerie forest, where he encounters a group of people, who may or may not be practicing satanism, which does not make sense to him because Puritans are known for being incredibly strict and highly religious people, but after this encounter, it leads

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1924 Words | 8 Pages

“Puritans, a term that refers to several groups of Protestants from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England known for abiding by strict codes of discipline and avoiding all forms of excess”(Riggs). This was important because the town of Salem was full of Puritans; they were very strict with certain things. They were expected to go to church every Sunday unless they were very ill. Certain things were very different across different periods of time, such as now going to church is optional and nonetheless, religion is optional. The time periods affected both of the stories, but it did not affect how one decision can make a life-altering

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872 Words | 4 Pages

(pg. 453)” Young Goodman Brown is a man living in the puritan era who has a wife and family, and is deep in his Christian faith. Young Goodman Brown lived in a town that is all connected to through the local church. Early in the story Young Goodman brown would set out to meet a person who would later be labeled as the devil by one of the locals. Young Goodman brown would have a vision of everyone in his community that would show him their wicked sins.

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721 Words | 3 Pages

The Salem village has tied every resident together, making them believing each other, but because of such peaceful crib, which resulted in the baby’s, Goodman Brown’s insanity. Goodman Brown has an innocent heart, like a baby, believing that all his friends and families, such as his father, grandfather, and his wife, are good humans instead of evil or involved in any evil events. Though those are plainly Brown’s ideals, as the story goes on, Brown’s ideals were destroyed one after another. The Salem village seemed to be a friendly village, because Brown’s relationships and impressions with others, such as the minister of Salem and Deacon Gookin, were quite good.

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879 Words | 4 Pages

The Devil influences the villagers of Salem, Massachusetts by using their ongoing fear of him to manipulate their thoughts and actions in a manner to set himself in the highest position by the end of the Act 1. As the Puritans lean toward blaming the Devil for their misgivings and suspicions, he gains control of their thoughts. Ruth and Betty pretend to fall ill after Reverend Parris catches them in the forest with Tituba and other girls, partaking in what is considered to be witchcraft: an act that defies the laws of femininity in the Puritan society. Mrs. Putnam does not buy her daughter Ruth’s act; rather, she sees it as “‘the Devil’s touch”’ which “‘is heavier than sick”’ (13). Believing that the Devil

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238 Words | 1 Pages

Although in this time period, the Puritans were seen as extremely devoted followers of God, they still seemed to be hypocrites as others of this time. In Hawthorne’s short story, when Goodman Brown gets to the meeting place of the devil and his fellow Puritans he sees the people who, “Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward” (37). Even though the Puritans went to church every Sunday and were always looking up to God, Hawthorne portrays them as secret sinners who meet with the Devil in the woods together, just as they meet at church every Sunday. Furthermore, after looking at all the familiar faces of his fellow Puritans’ deep in the mysterious woods, Goodman Brown points out one familiar face in particular, Goody Cloyse. Upon

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398 Words | 2 Pages

In her critique, Carnivalesque Freedom in Hawthorne’s YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN, Selina Jamil proposes that although there in an obvious theme of the human heart’s confrontation with evil, there is also a carnivalesque theme that is exemplified when the use of irony and parody ridicule the Puritan idea of virtue as well as the power of evil itself. Jamil continues that the carnivalesque theme further establishes that the “encounter with evil teaches the average mind to replace naiveté with skepticism.” Ultimately, Jamil states that there is no resolution with the internal conflict of Goodman Brown just like there is no resolution as to whether the “witch meeting” was reality or a dream. If Jamil indeed believes that YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN exemplifies a feature of Bakhtinian carnival, then Bakhtinian carnival concepts should, at the very least, be mentioned. Jamil offers a look at the ridicule of the Puritan idea of virtue and the “power” of evil itself by suggesting that the rituals displayed by Hawthorne “parodically mirror” that of the church; furthermore, the irony found in the “sable form” stating that

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1535 Words | 7 Pages

It is also worth to notice that John Hawthorne, one of the Salem Witch Trial Judges, was his great grandfather (Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography). Since Salem was his hometown, he developed his writing through the gospel of American Puritanism and intend to spread those principles through his literature which also gives the focus of his literature. Hawthorne’s writing style was unique and was well-regarded for several reasons. First of all, Hawthorne induces readers to use their own imagination to interpret the meaning of the tale, as it is evident in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Moreover, he likes to present multi-fold and multi-perspective of a character.

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483 Words | 2 Pages

The final dress rehearsal before our winter dance performance of “The Nutcracker”, for me this always means christmas season, and despite the blizzard outside, this is my favorite season. The group for my approaching number and I are eagerly waiting and anticipation our final call. We stab the last bobby-pins into our scalps greased down with hairspray and finish our last mascara and lipstick swiped. It may just be a dress rehearsal

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1234 Words | 5 Pages

1 In Hawthorne 's essay “Young Goodman Brown”, does it matter whether or not the protagonist, Goodman Brown, dreamt the events in the story? The idea and drive behind religious faith and belief is a concept consistently explored in Young Goodman Brown (YGB). The story explores Brown 's journey in a single night which inexplicably ends with a tarnished perspective on religious faith as portrayed by his fellow villagers. Brown himself grows to be disillusioned on faith but the events leading up to this shift however, is ambiguous at best, with the debate mostly centred towards the notion that Brown merely dreamt the events, resulting in an unfair and biased outcome in terms of his sentiment towards the villagers and his own belief.

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1098 Words | 5 Pages

Conversely, Hawthorne did not trust man at all. He was a Transcendental Pessimist. He believed man was corrupt, and following his intuition would fail him in life. One of Hawthorne’s short stories, “Young Goodman Brown”, portrays the tale of a young Christian man who wanders into the forest and witnesses a witch-meeting that involves some of the people Goodman Brown thought to be some of the holiest people he knew: the church Deacon, the pastor, and even Brown’s own wife, Faith. After the witch-meeting incident in the woods, Brown wonders whether he witnessed the witch meeting, or if it was a creation of his own imagination: “quote”.

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1297 Words | 6 Pages

His family has a long standing history in Salem, as his relative John Hathorne was a judge in the Witch Trials. Soon after the trials a ‘w’ was added to the family’s last name to distance themselves from the horrors of the time (Nathaniel Hawthorne Biography). Set during

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