Ambiguity And Ambivalence In Walter Paulits's Young Goodman Brown

The short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathanial Hawthorne is a classic in American literature. This tale tells of the journey a man takes into the woods away from his home in Salem, Massachusetts where he has a life-altering experience that can be hard to understand. Because of its difficulty and uncertainty, many literary critics have attempted to tackle the story’s theme, but have various opinions. Walter Paulits took on the challenge and wrote his article “Ambivalence in ‘Young Goodman Brown’” and tried to decipher the text. Overall, in “Ambivalence in ‘Young Goodman Brown’,” Paulits uses complex arguments along with intricate details and comparisons to accurately describe the overarching theme of ambivalence in Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown”. When Paulits commences his article, he poses the idea of whether Hawthorne’s short story is about ambiguity or ambivalence. When describing the two, Paulits (1970) defines ambiguity as being “concerned with intermingled meanings,” or uncertainty, and ambivalence as being “concerned with opposing feelings within the same person when confronted with a value or values”, or having mixed feelings (p. 557). He continues to explain the difference of the two, and identifies his …show more content…
Paulits (1970) identifies that when Young Goodman Brown enters the forest, he is faced with the “attraction for the devil,” along with the “regret of leaving Faith”, Brown’s wife (p. 578). He continues and elucidates that this scene in the story is in fact a point of ambivalence because “he [Brown] wants two things strongly enough” that he is “unwilling to give up either” (Paulits, 1970, p. 578). By providing strong evidence with a clear explanation, Paulits creates an accurate claim that successfully proves his point of how the specific instance reveals the story’s