“But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes” (Hawthorne). The virtue of the community seems constantly in flux. The forest, despite its darkness and its terrors, is not a direct foil to the village. Bell notes that historically, the people of Puritan New England would likely have been fearful of the woods the forest would have held dangers, and this would make the forest the ideal symbol for the darkness of the human heart (Bell). “The forest is the antithesis of house and heart, village and field boundary, where the household gods hold sway and where human laws and customs prevail It holds the dark and forbidden things-secrets, terrors, which threaten the protected life” (Cook 473).Īs Brown enters the forest, then, he is both physically and symbolically leaving the protection of human culture, and what he enters into is something that is much more primal and much more fearsome than the village (Cook 473-474). It is important, Cook suggests, that Goodman Brown enter the forest to truly begin to understand the nature of humanity: The forest is the first of many symbolic features of the story, and Goodman Brown’s excursion into the forest is an integral part of the beginning of the text (Hawthorne). “Young Goodman Brown” is a tale that sees the darkest evil in humanity, and uses the backdrop of the Salem Witch Trials and the contrast between nature and community to demonstrate the depth of this very human evil for his audience. The text is an allegorical discussion of human nature, and examines the deepest nature of the human heart: Hawthorne gazes deeply into the human soul in this text, and finds human nature, as a whole, lacking integrity and goodness. “Young Goodman Brown” is a short story set in the Puritan hamlet of Salem, approximately during the era in which the Salem Witch Trials were occurring (Eberwin 23). Nathaniel Hawthorne is sometimes remembered for his landmark text The Scarlet Letter, but he was also a master of the short story.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |