Nathaniel Hawthorne's biographer, Hyatt H. Waggoner,
wrote,
readability="8">Hawthorne continued to note in himself, and to
disapprove, feelings and attitudes he projected in..."Young Goodman
Brown."Waggoner also noted
Hawthorne's tendency not only to study others with cool objectivity, but to study
himself with almost obsessive interest. Thus, the parallels between Hawthorne, who
dwelt with Puritan gloom and his protagonist Young Goodman Brown are certainly obvious.
Brown, under the overriding shadow of the Calvinistic/Puritan gloom and conviction of
the innate depravity of man, challenges his faith--"Faith kept me back a while"--as he
accompanies the old man with the crooked staff to the forest primeval, perhaps in
reality Goodman's darker side, where a black mass is to be celebrated and new
inductees to be initiated. As "he of the serpent" accompanies him, Brown is confronted
by his catechism teacher, Goody Cloyse, and he sees the Deacon Gookin also on their way
to the dark forest. Like Hawthorne, his narrator, Brown challenges the Puritan beliefs
in his adventure. Yet, as the traveller hints at his recognition of the darkness of
Goodman's soul, Brown claims his innocence and goodness
repeatedly.It is this conflict of guilt and
rebellion that leads Hawthorne's character into the dark forest where he
looksto the
sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above.With
heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman
Brown.Once he has witnessed
the black mass, Goodman becomes "maddened with despair" as he cries, "My Faith is gone"
when he beholds the pink ribbons that have wafted to him. He rushes "onward with the
instinct that guides mortal man to evil," and recognizes the "fiend in his own
shape." Whether Brown has fallen asleep or been overcome by his spiritual angst, he
awakens to a sudden gleam of light flashing over the field. The figure in the forest
has proclaimed, "Evil is the nature of mankind," and Goodman becomes a "stern, a sad, a
darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man" from this night on. Indeed,
his faith is gone, for he cannot view any with but the most misanthropic
perspective. Goodman Brown dies "a hoary corpse" whose "dying hour was gloom" because in
his rebellion of accompanying the traveller into the forest primevil he could not shake
his controlling feelings of Puritan gloom and Clavinistic guilt.
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