Research Paper On Young Goodman Brown

The Wicked dream of “Young Goodman Brown” The story of "Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is based on Goodman Brown’s trip to meet the devil and witches, where he discovers many honorable people from his village, including his wife, Faith. Faith, with her pink ribbons, was full of goodness. Seeing her there destroyed any faith he had that good exists. However, by the end of the story everything he had seen as real was questionable. The author insinuates how everything he saw had not been real, but just a dream. In David Levin’s article explains Hawthorne’s casting doubt of what Young Goodman Brown experienced in the forest wasn’t real: “…he fails to insist on the difference between a person and the person's "shape," or specter” (344). The people he had seen were just in his imagination. Brown wasn’t able to distinguish if what he saw was a real person or his imagination. When Goodman

(6)! The author suggests that Young Goodman Brown didn’t really see everything he thought he said. Hawthorne is telling the reader that perhaps all was just a dream. Goodman Brown was never sure that he saw a person but only a figure: “As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path…” (2). The author all along was just describing Young Goodman Brown’s dream and how that dream changed his personality.

In Young Goodman Brown’s vision or dream the people he saw were good and respected in Salem village, including his wife. When he comes back Faith, Deacon Gookin, the minister and the rest he saw were acting exactly the same. These chains of events made Goodman Brown change towards everyone and loose his mind. None of their lives seemed to have changed except Young Goodman Browns’. Concluding that all occurred in the forest and what he though he saw was just a horrible