Absence of Absolute Good or Absolute Evil in Hawthornes Young Goodman

Absence of inviolable Good or Absolute Evil in Young Goodman Brown Lo There ye stand, my children, said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his formerly angelis nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. Depending on one anothers hearts, ye had lock hoped, that virtue were not all a dream. Now ye are undeceived Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the sharing of your race The above quotation from Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown is of central splendor in analyzing the attitudes and ideas present doneout the story, though in a special(a) way. The quotation (and the story itself), on first reading, seem superficially to draw a central characters loss of faith and the spiritual tragedy contained therein. Rereading, however, reveals a more complex set of ideas, ones which neither fully condemn nor condone the strictly constructed dichotomy of good and evil that Ha wthorne employs again and again everyplace the course of Goodman Browns journey. I think Hawthorne had much more in intellect than a mere outline of good and evil. His primary struggle in Young Goodman Brown seems to be less with faith vs. the faithless debauch than with the points in between these states. The story seems more about the journey through between two rigidly defined states than about good and evil. By describing good and evil through heavy-handed metaphors and symbols, such(prenominal) as his wifes see and the satanic communion he finds himself at in the forest, and then describing goodman Browns unfitness to adapt his self-image to the hypocrisy he finds, Hawthorne comments on the ultimate failure of such a rigidly proscribed formula for... ... these two states than it is about a definitive statement on outlining a definition of proper human being behavior. Works Cited Capps, Jack L. Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown, Explicator, Washington D.C., 1982 Spring, 403, 25. Easterly, Joan Elizabeth. lacrimal Imagery in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown, Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S.C., 1991 Summer, 283, 339-43. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodmam Brown, The Story and Its Writer, 4th ed. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1995, 595-604. Shear, Walter. Cultural circumstances and Social Freedom in Three American Short Stories, Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S.C., 1992 Fall, 294, 543-549. Tritt, Michael. Young Goodman Brown and the Psychology of Projection, Studies in Short Fiction, Newberry, S.C., 1986 Winter, 231, 113-117.