Search For Truth In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Through his main character in “Young Goodman Brown” Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates how the search for truth can sometimes lead to the discovery of an evil greater than an honest man’s strong will. Hawthorne demonstrates the foreshadowing of future events thru Goodman Brown and Faith’s farewell conversation. Even though Goodman Brown is smitten by his heart before parting into the woods, he proceeds to, “haste on his present evil purpose.” Regardless of premonitions and dreams warning of the evil that lures around Salem, Goodman Brown can’t escape the fatal attraction of the devil. Hawthorne insinuates that Goodman Brown and Faith have prior knowledge of the events that are to happen on Goodman Brown’s journey. Faith, sadden by the departure of Goodman Brown, calls upon her husband to plea …show more content…
Once setting foot forward upon that dreary road, Goodman Brown immediately becomes suppressed by the fear that creeps around in the vast emptiness of this enchanted forest, yet this fear was not enough to make him turn back home to Faith. Hawthorne demonstrates by saying, “It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveler knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead.” Goodman Brown says to himself, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!” The devil indeed called upon him and waited patiently in this wilderness. Hawthorne never displays who this mysterious man that appears in the woods is, but he bestows enough clues for the reader to conclude that this is the devil himself. Described as knowledgeable of all things in the world, being acquainted with Goodman Brown’s genealogy and carrying a staff, “which bore the likeness of a great black snake.” We know from Adam and Eve that the devil presented himself as a

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