Puritanism Exposed In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

Improved Essays
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing is consistently noted and acclaimed, especially for his recurring themes that assume a prevalent role in the downfall of his ancestral religion, Puritanism. Puritans were a religious group during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who, after oppression from the King of England, sought to reform the Church of England from its Catholic traditions. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born to a Puritan family in 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. From his experiences, Hawthorne explores the Puritan viewpoint of how people conform under the social expectations of a Puritan society. His parents, Nathaniel Hathorne (Hawthorne was ashamed of his ancestral history because of their involvement in the Salem Witch Trials. Consequently, he added a “w.”) and Elizabeth Clark Manning were frequent practitioners. However, many church members frequently harassed them, which eventually formed Hawthorne’s ideologies for Puritanism, the strongest and most effective theme across his literature. Therefore, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works exhibit …show more content…
These works, which center around a quest, include “Young Goodman Brown,” where the main character ultimately discovers himself. Through what he believes to be a religious enlightenment, Brown realizes his true feelings about Puritanism, as described: “The common idiom of criticism has been that of morally committed psychology of characters and their religion experience” (Wilczyński 288). Brown initially made secret meetings with a “strange man” in the forest directly outside of his village of Salem. Being genuinely concerned about his wife, Faith, he informs her that he must leave for a treacherous journey into the forest and that she need not follow him, for her own safety. Puritanism is extremely prevalent in this instance, which is tearing him away from his wife, solely because he is doing this for a religious

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Imagery is included in The Scarlet Letter to insert a more profound message. The application of light and dark imagery is essential to the novel in creating a lively and melancholy moods to establish variance in the characters as well as their lives. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses the societal hypocrisy of Puritans, elements of nature and the importance of the scarlet letter to exude the how sin is an entity of life. Puritans are merciless and use public humiliation as an epitome of the consequences of sin. In Boston during the seventeenth century, Puritans came to set up a paradise colony but upon arriving “[the] founders of a new colony… have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Throughout all of American Literature, authors have used different techniques to relay a message to the reader, one way being by depicting how the community’s influence on the protagonist shapes the protagonists’ development. In The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, authors Hawthorne and Miller, respectively, use the social norms in Puritan society to express a common theme by portraying the positive and negative moral changes in characters. In Puritan society, individuals believed they were carrying out “God’s work”, creating a society where compromise was rare and harsh punishment was inflicted upon those who made mistakes that were deemed immoral to society. Because of the strict nature of the Puritans, acting in a manner that was completely…

    • 1428 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most of Hawthorne’s critics feel as if “Young Goodman Brown” one of his best works. In my opinion D.C. McKeithan chooses to interpret Hawthorne’s tale by using an example of a man who is saddened into distrust by the sins of the people surrounding him. He is made skeptical and untrusting of others because of his own contributes into sin. McKeithan goes around this by mainly seeing that while there are a bunch of different interpretations, past critics have failed to realize some of the most apparent parts of the story.…

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Short Stories: Young Goodman Brown.” East of the Web, East of the Web, www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/YouGoo.shtml. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is a story that represents the pervasiveness and secrecy of sin and evil that is alive within all people, especially in the Puritan society that the protagonist, Mr. Brown, lives in in. Despite the Puritan ideal of being the the most pure and faithful community in colonial America, the story reveals the hypocrisy involved in this religion.…

    • 1568 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the short story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne the symbols he is using are allegories to the moral of the story. The moral of the story can be explained many different ways but the moral is everything/ everyone that look good to the public eye isn’t always good behind closed doors or dark places. Young Goodman Brown discovers that from sunset to nightfall the outside world is different, you see things that shouldn’t be seen, and your Faith is tested it’s all up to yourself to not let evil take over your mind. Young Goodman Brown is man from Salem Village, the village of Puritans.…

    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Young Goodman Brown, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a common American short story about the guilty conscience we human beings have. Goodman Brown is presented with a test of his faith in God. In this ambiguous story, Brown debates the reality of the events that took place versus everything just being a dream. The theme shows the battle between good and evil under the capacity of turning away from one’s faith and falling for the evils of life. Throughout the story, Hawthorne reveals the natural weaknesses in human nature and how the human soul falls into temptation.…

    • 156 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Nathaniel Hawthorne is possibly one of the greatest authors of all time. Hawthorne was born and worked in the nineteenth century. He had a large collection of literature that ranged from children’s stories, nonfiction sketches, a presidential campaign biography of Franklin, essays, and four major novels (Alexander 3). This large background of different types of literature helped him become the Hawthorne that people know today. Hawthorne believed that sin and evil are present in people, that original sin visited us and that when deeply thinking the mind is not free from any thought (Alexander 3).…

    • 1660 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the short story "Young Goodman Brown", the main character is a man disillusioned by sin. At the end of the story, the reader realizes that all of his disillusionment was a dream, but he continues to believe the lies in his reality. This affects the story because obviously all of those characters are not truly evil. Everyone is a sinner. That doesn’t mean that the way his dream portrayed those characters such as Faith, Goody Cloyse, The Minister, and Deacon Gookin is correct representations of their character.…

    • 140 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since the beginning of civilization, religion was fabricated to explain the natural world and used as a solution regarding questions science could not explain, these beliefs were then utilized as the foundations for many societies. Religion had a detrimental influence on the government and laws, which governed these societies. A magnificent example of a community demolished due to religion are the Puritans in Plymouth, Massachusetts, an English Protestant religious sect who followed the beliefs devised by John Calvin, a Swiss theologian and protestant reformer. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a direct descendent of John Hathorne, a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trials, wrote a short work titled “Young Goodman Brown”. In his short work, Hawthorne utilizes the Puritans beliefs and illustrates how those beliefs hindered the Puritans capacity to grow as a society, thus inducing his main character, Young Goodman Brown to live a life filled with despair.…

    • 1261 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story that describes a nocturnal journey undertakes by a young religious and maried Goodman Brown in the village of Salem in New England. Goodman Brown starts this trip against the advice of his wife Faith with a pink ribbon in her hair who wants him to stay home for that night. Soon after, Goodman finds himself in a deep forest where he meets an older fellow traveller who wears a distinctive staff looking like a great black snake and well knowledged. At the request of the older traveller to speed up their pace, young wants to return home but the well experienced traveller convinces the young man to go deeper into the forest by recounting how his ancestors before him have undertaken this…

    • 1128 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is a story about the struggle between good and evil which is a narrative that has been around for decades. All throughout history people have fought to maintain balance between the two and not let one overpower the other and Young Goodman Brown is one of these people. Young Goodman Brown is stuck between choosing to worship the devil or have faith in God. Faith is also the name of his wife, who he sees as the ultimate symbol of purity and goodness. Faith’s portrayal of purity is only furthered by the pink ribbons she wears as they represent purity and innocence while also giving her a childlike quality.…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Loss of Faith and Innocence In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” he illustrates the duplicity of man’s mind and the struggles to understand truth. By the end of the dark story, the author does not articulate if Young Goodman Brown really took part in a heathen experience in the night described in the story or if it was all made up. Whether part of his imagination or real, the experiences of Brown changed his life forever. It changed everything he knew about faith, love, mankind and society. “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.”…

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Symbolism and allegory are two literary elements that are frequently used in many literary works. Symbolism, an element that uses images and indirect impression to represent ideas, emotions, and state of mind is compared to allegory, a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning in the form of a narrative or concrete material. These elements are commonly used in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” Hawthorne’s story provides an example of allegory in which he uses figures and characters in the story as symbols to better support his allegorical tones in which he uses complete symbolism.…

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What is your impression on how puritan world view is taken up and treated by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter? The Scarlet Letter is an indictment on the follies of the puritans featuring the rigid values and beliefs of the society. Hawthorne criticizes various aspects of the puritan confraternity through the lives of the characters and the punishsment one is made to undergo because of the sin committed. Hawthorne took the puritan view seriously in the scarlet letter by depicting the gender inequality, hypocrisy of government officials and stiff rules of the puritan society.…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story that takes place in the 1690s, immediately before the infamous Salem witch trials. The story is a detailed account of the protagonist Goodman Brown’s journey through the forest, in which he experiences evil and sin of those he admired in his town of Salem. The main character experiences internal conflicts in respect to his attitude and religion. In analyzing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” the vital themes, character progression, and settings filled with imagery, all provides a depth understanding of the protagonist’s outlook throughout the story, and the reason for his radical change.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays