The Tragedy of Young Goodman Brown

Subject  > Art Essays  > Works of Art

Have you ever experienced a change in initial thought? You are given a first impression, then a certain revelation changes your life forever. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”, Young Goodman Brown suffers a similar fate. After leaving his wife Faith, Brown heads into a forest on a pilgrimage, where Brown discovers the second nature within the many people whom influenced his life, including Faith. Through the detailing of Brown’s journey, Hawthorne reveals the hidden parallel world that Brown has been unaware. Through Brown himself, the people he knows, and various objects and events that he would experience, Hawthorne introduces the theme of duplicity. By the time Goodman Brown enters the forest, Hawthorne immediately indulges the ...

... yet seemingly demonic, and the conversion ritual itself, the one that took his own Faith, is probably similar to the conversion rituals he has attended in the past. Hawthorne’s theme of duplicity is emphasized throughout Young Goodman Brown’s revelations in the presence of his own self, the presence of other selves, and the presence itself. It begins with a meeting with a figure that looked similar to Young Goodman Brown itself, transpires to the figures that Young Goodman Brown knew, or thought he knew, throughout his life, and progresses into a situation such that even the surroundings are formed into a second world. It may be reality, or it may be a dream, but

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