A Tale of Morality, Betrayal and The Dark Secrets of Puritanism
Young Goodman Brown is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne that follows the titular character on a mysterious journey through the forest, exploring themes of sin, temptation, and the duality of human nature.
Hawthorne begins his story by thrusting us into the middle of a departure. As the sun retreats and dusk creeps over Salem Village, Young Goodman Brown leaves his home despite the protests and pleas of his wife, Faith. We don’t know where our main character is going, only that he is heading through a gloomy forest with an “evil purpose.” As the couple say their final goodbyes, Faith’s anguished face leads Goodman Brown to suspect she knows his motives – but no, he thinks, it would kill this “blessed angel” to know of them.
Making his way through the twilight gloom, supposing evil to lie behind every tree, suddenly the figure of a man described as wearing “grave and decent attire” appears before him. The man looks uncannily like Goodman Brown himself, and seems to have been expecting him. He radiates an indefinable enigmatic aura – one of quiet confidence and worldly knowledge. One of his only concrete characteristics is his staff, carved to look like a great black snake, and so intricate it seems to slither like a living serpent.
The two men walk on, and the darkness of night descends. The unnamed man says they still have far to go, and time is getting late. He urges Goodman Brown to take his serpent staff, saying they will arrive at their destination more quickly this way. Goodman Brown protests, and begins to lament his journey. He tells the man his family are “a race of honest men and good Christians,” and that he will be the first of his family to walk this path.
On the contrary, says the man. He knew Goodman Brown’s father, and helped him set fire to a Native American village. He knew Goodman Brown’s grandfather when he whipped a Quaker woman in the streets of Salem. Both were the mysterious man’s good friends, and he had many walks with them along the path that Goodman Brown is now treading.
Just as Goodman Brown begins to protest, to express his disbelief that these good, honest Puritans could commit such foul deeds, he sees Goody Cloyse – described in the story as a “pious and exemplary dame” who plays an active role in Salem’s religious activities – ahead of them. Goodman Brown hurries into the bushes to avoid letting Goody Cloyse see him in the company of a stranger. He watches the strange encounter between the two people, who seem to have some knowledge of each other; indeed, Goody Cloyse refers to the older man as “Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is”! Goodman Brown sees the man throw his staff at Goody Cloyse’s feet – and she vanishes.
ANALYSIS
The most important function of this story is to express the hypocrisy and naivety that Hawthorne saw in Puritan culture, and the author establishes this right from the start. Goodman Brown has a romantic image of himself, Goody Cloyse, and his ancestors as simple, God-fearing, law-abiding Christians – yet we know it is temptation that leads him to head into the forest for an “evil purpose” learn of the wicked deeds his forefathers committed, and witness the odd meeting of the man and Goody Cloyse. Hawthorne saw a disconnect between Puritan ideals and their appraisals of themselves on the one hand, and the reality of human nature on the other. We have a chilling capacity for evil, and are easily tempted creatures, the author implies.
“Young Goodman Brown” (1835) is a short story that thrusts us into a nightmarish world of witchcraft, religion, sin, and temptation. Composed as an allegory – a story that acts as a thin wrapper for an author’s intended message or meaning – this bite-size tale has much to say on human nature, Christianity, hypocrisy, and our ideas of community.
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Blink 3 von 12 - Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit
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