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Example research essay topic: Young Goodman Brown Hawthorne Young Goodman - 1,203 words

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... s is another demonstration of Brown's excessive pride and arrogance. He believes that he is better than everyone else in that he alone can destroy evil. Brown then comes upon the ceremony which is setup like a perverted Puritan temple.

The altar was a rock in the middle of the congregation and there were four trees surrounding the congregation with their tops ablaze, like candles. A red light rose and fell over the congregation which cast a veil of evil over the congregation over the devil worshippers. Brown starts to take notice of the faces that he sees in the service and he recognizes them all, but he then realizes that he does not see Faith and "hope came into his heart." This is the first time that the word "hope" ever comes into the story and it is because this is the true turning point for Goodman Brown. If Faith was not there, as he had hoped, he would not have to live alone in his community of heathens, which he does not realize that he is already apart of. Another way that the hope could be looked at is that it is all one of "the Christian triptych." (Capps 25) The third part of the triptych which is never mentioned throughout the story is charity. If Brown had had "charity" it would have been the "antidote that would have allowed him to survive without despair the informed state in which he returned to Salem. " (Camps 25) The ceremony then begins with a a cry to "Bring forth the converts!" Surprisingly Goodman Brown steps forward. "He had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought... ." Goodman Brown at this point seems to be in a trance and he loses control of his body as he is unconsciously entering this service of converts to the devil.

The leader of the service than addresses the crowd of converts in a disturbing manner. He informs them that all the members of the congregation are the righteous, honest, and incorruptible of the community. The sermon leader then informs the crowd of their leader's evil deeds such as attempted murder of the spouse and wife, adultery, and obvious blasphemy. After his sermon, the leader informs them to look upon each other and Goodman Brown finds himself face to face with Faith. The leader begins up again declaring that "Evil is the nature of mankind" and he welcomes the converts to "communion of your race." (The "communion of your race" statement reflects to the irony of Brown's earlier statement that he comes from "a race of honest men and good Christians. ") The leader than dips his hand in the rock to draw a liquid from it and "to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads." Brown than snaps out from his trance and yells "Faith!

Faith! Look up to Heaven and resist the wicked one!" At this, the ceremony ends and Brown finds himself alone. He does not know whether Faith, his wife, had kept her faith, but he finds himself alone which leads him to believe that he is also alone in his faith. Throughout the story, Brown lacks emotion as a normal person would have had. The closest Brown comes to showing an emotion is when "a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew. " The dew on his cheek represents a tear that Brown is unable to produce because of his lack of emotion. Hawthorne shows that Brown has "no compassion for the weaknesses he sees in others, no remorse for his own sin, and no sorrow for his loss of faith. " (Easterly 339) His lack of remorse and compassion "condemns him to an anguished life that is spiritually and emotionally dissociated. " (Easterly 341) This scene is an example of how Goodman Brown chose to follow his head rather than his heart.

Had Brown followed his heart, he may have still lived a good life. If he followed with his heart, he would have been able to sympathize with the community's weaknesses, but instead, he listened to his head and excommunicated himself from the community because he only thought of them as heathens. "Young Goodman Brown" ends with Brown returning to Salem at early dawn and looking around like a "bewildered man. " He cannot believe that he is in the same place that he just the night before; because to him, Salem was no longer home. He felt like an outsider in a world of Devil worshippers and because his "basic means of order, his religious system, is absent, the society he was familiar with becomes nightmarish. " (Shear 545) He comes back to the town "projecting his guilt onto those around him. " (Tritt 114) Brown expresses his discomfort with his new surroundings and his excessive pride when he takes a child away from a blessing given by Goody Close, his former Catechism teacher, as if he were taking the child "from the grasp of the fiend himself. " His anger towards the community is exemplified when he sees Faith who is overwhelmed with excitement to see him and he looks "sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting. " Brown cannot even stand to look at his wife with whom he was at the convert service with. He feels that even though he was at the Devil's service, he is still better than everyone else because of his excessive pride. Brown feels he can push his own faults on to others and look down at them rather than look at himself and resolve his own faults with himself. Goodman Brown was devastated by the discovery that the potential for evil resides in everybody.

The rest of his life is destroyed because of his inability to face this truth and live with it. The story, which may have been a dream, and not a real life event, planted the seed of doubt in Brown's mind which consequently cut him off from his fellow man and leaves him alone and depressed. His life ends alone and miserable because he was never able to look at himself and realize that what he believed were everyone else's faults were his as well. His excessive pride in himself led to his isolation from the community. Brown was buried with "no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom. " Capps, Jack L. "Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown", Explicator, Washington D. C. , 1982 Spring, 40: 3, 25.

Easterly, Joan Elizabeth. "Lachrymal Imagery in Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown", Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S. C. , 1991 Summer, 28: 3, 339 - 43. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown", The Story and Its Writer, 4 th ed. Ed.

Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1995, 595 - 604. Shear, Walter. "Cultural Fate and Social Freedom in Three American Short Stories", Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S. C. , 1992 Fall, 29: 4, 543 - 549. Tritt, Michael. "Young Goodman Brown and the Psychology of Projection", Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S.

C. , 1986 Winter, 23: 1, 113 - 117. Bibliography:


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