Does Young Goodman Brown Achieve Goodness? Essay -- Young Goodman Brow

Does Young Goodman Brown Achieve worthiness? Nathaniel Hawthorne often emphasizes the uncertain nature of sin, that good and unrighteous do non exist in parallel with each other but at many times intersect with each other in his fiction. In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne applies what he believes is the virtue of recognizing cosmic irony of taking into news report the contradictions inherent in the benignant condition, to his portrayal of Young Goodman Brown. According to Hawthornes view, Browns failure to recognize the inherent ugliness in himself as well as the rest of munificence, results, not in a rewarding life of reveling in righteousness, but in isolation and obscurity. Hawthorne juxtaposes the village of Salem, Massachusetts in the untimely 1690s, where doctrinal law and Puritan theology rule, with the mystical forest where evil and the supernatural reside to symbolically represent Browns own misguided percept of the mutual exclusivity of good and evil. Brown conne cts the world of worth with his wife Faith, who he believes he is leaving behind in the village while he makes his journey into the wilderness. He describes her as a blessed angel on earth to whom he vows to return after this one night Ill deposit to her skirts forever and follow her to heaven(65, 65). Browns characterization of Faith indicates that he believes he can travel between the world of sin and the world of goodness and remain unscathed or unchanged by the experience. However, Hawthorne creates the conflict of the ambiguous nature of sin in humanity for Brown with certain find out symbols. For instance, Hawthorne uses Faiths pink ribbons, to symbolize the notion that although the world of the village is supposed to be that of goodness and purit... ...able fact that sin is a part of human nature. The softness of Brown and Hilda to recognize Hawthornes concept that humanity resides not on each the side of evil or the side of virtue, but somewhere in between the two wher e one can acknowledge ones own sinfulness as well as the sins of humanity, but one can overly feel compassion for ones fellow human beings despite the sin, is what causes their weakness. Young Goodman Brown, by not noticing the nature of Faiths pink ribbons and Hilda, by looking at humanity with angel eyes(55) rather than with the eyes of a woman, both pay the compassion which would allow them to make meaningful and satisfying connections with their fellow human beings. Works CitedHawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Julia Reidhead. New York W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1998.