Religion In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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. Consequently, the …show more content…
The Puritans held the belief that supernatural phenomena existed, most importantly spirits and the devil. Nicholas Hytner directed the movie adaptation of the play The Crucible, in the film, we see a community go into mass hysteria due to the belief of supernatural entities, most importantly the belief of witches and the devil. These beliefs caused the community to turn against one another when in reality, there were no supernatural entities present. We also see this dilemma in the story “Young Goodman Brown.” As Goodman Brown is walking in the forest, he begins to cogitate about the darkness around him and that perhaps there might be a “devilish Indian” or the devil lurking in the shadows. Ultimately, there was nothing lurking in the shadows except for Goodman Brown’s paranoia over the supernatural. These beliefs of the supernatural entities only made Goodman Brown agonize over what was only a