The story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an enticing story that invites the reader to constantly question motives, morality and poses the question of what is real and what is fake. Young Goodman Brown’s actions and reactions to the things that he sees leads the reader to the realization that those who profess the strongest moral values may sometimes be the quickest to change and become evil. The vivid and real themes of the story do not come out of nowhere. The story is written by Hawthorne who was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts to a family with an extensive New England family heritage. The Hawthorne legacy was one of strict Puritanism which was often portrayed by Hawthorne in his stories and novels. When Hawthorne was four years old his beloved father, a career sea-captain died due to complications from yellow fever. Hawthorne's development was left solely to his mother. His uncle, Robert Manning, helped …show more content…
He writes “Young Goodman Brown: “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become” (73). The chain of events that began in the forest that night took Goodman Brown off the deep end, but the story doesn’t necessarily end there. To Goodman Brown there was much more happening to him than just what he sees that night. Later, he is bombarded with terrible illusions of his family members and friends partaking in horrible satanic acts of the time and that could be enough to make anyone go crazy. Hawthorne leaves much of the thinking behind the story up to the reader and leaves it to the reader to make the interpretation between what is real and what is fake. That night in the forest was the night young Goodman Brown went off the deep end. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to discuss. One night can be a long time, especially when one is being bombarded with one disillusioning sight after