Young Goodman Brown Paper

Thesis Statement

This story is about Goodman Brown who decides to end up his worldly relations with all ofhis concerned or unconcerned mates as well as his wife who craves for him day in day out. In the end, he becomes normal and returns to his old self, thus restoring memories of his olden days when he used to be as normal as everyone else.

“Young Goodman Brown” has been written from a perspective that is tilted more towards the female characters whereby a number of people have noted that the protagonists who were usually male, rejected any sexual relationship with a woman, ordinarily the wife or fiancée for that matter. Usually, this kind of negative response did have a deadly result on the disrespected woman. It has been noted that the stories that were penned down before 1842 had a female character that was destroyed only by accident and not by intention alone. The story has shown the transformation of a man from his normal state to that of an abnormal one where he abandoned meeting with anyone and then in the end coming back to his life and restoring normal relationships with all that were important to him and more than that, his wife.

A number of authors have made note of the fact that Browns departure from faith and reliance was not an act on purpose since Brown actually planned on returning to her after the forest trip. But there is a belief that the very act of the man leaving the woman shows the males indifference to the security related with their females. Thus it is viewed as the women are in reality viewed as somewhat a kind of sexual beings and men as sexually frozen pieces. The mans lack of sexual desire is what has been truly killing the woman of late and it basically allows for the man to continue living in a hollow life. This is true that this does not necessarily mean the real nature of women but about the way in which men imagine of them. Hawthornes men are obsessed with females but the only way they can make any connection with women is through fantasy or by performing some fantasy-related activities that are not considered appropriate by the female populace.

The family ties play a huge role here as husband and wife are considered as the two wheels of a car, the car being the home in this point. These two have to gel together emotionally as well as physically in order to make their individual lives easy and the people who are attached with them within the household. Family ties definitely help the Young Goodman Brown as the writer has suggested that in the long run, it is the family which plays its due role when someone within the family actually runs into some sort of misery or worry.

The story has further elaborated the fact that since Goodman Brown has left faith, he becomes an individual expressively whereby his departure from his wife has not only been a source of symbolic loss of faith, but also has left behind the age old belief. In the woods, Goodman Browns religion has been shown as being absent; therefore the recognizable woods are somewhat shown as being frightening. Young Goodman Brown thus must effort tirelessly with the people in the woods so as to hold on to his morals and principles as well as values. It is indeed Goodman Brown who is against society and he must definitely be the one who has to get betrayed by that very society in the end. In the very ending, Goodman Brown decides to leave the fantasy and returns to normal society in which his main role is to interact with the family as well as understand his relationships with other family members and avoid the hindrances so as to make himself aware of his relationship with the other members of the society.

Goodman Brown has thus represented the unbalanced Puritanism whereby it has decreased in its religious confidence and certainty as well as become to some extent hypocritical of his own achievements and failures for that matter. Goodman Browns disgust and a sense of being repelled to his wife as well as the community have indeed represented his own need to sensitively repress his reasons for taking the first step into the forest. (Hawthorne, 2004)

Goodman Browns secret has been the source of guilt for him, which has basically led him in to an area where he considers himself as isolated from everyone as he possibly could be since now he has become bitter mainly due to the fact that he had been given over to the evil in the world by being an active participant of the very same.

Bibliography
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. (2004). Shorter 8th Edition Norton Introduction to Literature, ed. Beaty and Hunter