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Conclusion 15
Works Cited 18
The “Permanent Sin” Theme in “Young Goodman Brown”
Introduction
Nathaniel Hawthorne is an outstanding novelist of American Romanticism in the 19th century. His short stories have most important status in America. Although best known to the world as the author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne is, in fact, a prodigious author of short stories. “Hawthorn’s highest achievement is not in The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun, distinguished as they are, but best in his tales and sketches”(Franklin 76). His works remain notable for their treatment of guilt and the complexities of moral choices. In his works, Hawthorne consistently expresses similar ideas about the nature of good and evil, as well as guilt, both in a public and private sense. “Young Goodman Brown” is one of the best short stories of Hawthorne. The story is about Young Goodman Brown’s personal conflict over his inner desires and its greater meaning conflict between good and evil in the world.
However, for many years, a lot of critical essays have sprung up on Hawthorn’s works, among which many were written on his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. It seems that both Chinese and western critics are more likely to analyze this novel from the perspective of Puritanism, symbolism, morality, psychoanalysis, feminism, formalism, etc. Over years, critics put much emphasis on The Scarlet Letter and neglect other works. As a matter of fact, Hawthorn’s “short stories, or tales were widely acclaimed for their deft recreation of the past, insightful characterizations, and allegorical treatment of such themes as sin, guilt and alienation” (Bunge 341).
The thesis intends to analyze the “permanent sin” theme in “Young Goodman Brown” from three aspects: characters, images and psychological descriptions. There are two protagonists “Brown” and “Faith”. The meanings of Brown and Faith’s name and their inconsistent behaviors can vividly present the “permanent sin”. Besides two protagonists, some other characters can’t be ignored. They are the fellow traveler, the minister of the church and Gookin. The fellow traveler is Brown’s father and he always persuades Brown to go to the hell when Brown hesitates. The minister of the church and Gookin are respected by Brown, but they still participate in the devil’s party and do some evil things. Through the depiction of these three people’s deep psychological descriptions, we can see a thought picture of original sin to readers that both saint or villain all have privacy evil. In addition, there are also some important images such as pink ribbons and snake-like staff. Pink ribbons are representatives of the impure and defective human spiritual world with a stain. And Faith’s ribbons also represent her impurity and the evil in her heart. The staff is the sign of Satan, the original sin. Hawthorne describes the staff like a snake to express the “sin” theme, namely, it is representative of the devil and evil forces. These two images vividly express that everyone is evil.
Chapter One Conflicts between Names and Behaviors
“Young Goodman Brown” tells a story that a young man leaves his beautiful wife Faith for participating in the devil’s party at sunset. Brown thinks over that he can have a happy life with Faith after tonight, because he believes that no one knows his participation and never meets with someone. So he feels that it is reasonable to realize the present evil purpose as soon as possible. But everything is contrary to all his expectations. When he comes to the dark forest, Brown finds and sees many people who he respects and admires at usual also secretly have a date with the devil. Some of these people are the respected minister of church, pious man and chaste girls, even his lovely wife. Hawthorne shows us the supernatural, grotesque and terror of the phenomenon vividly with the skilled techniques and delicately psychological description, but also leads to the human nature of “evil” step by step. According to Puritanism, the nature of human is evil and everyone is evil from their birth. Hawthorne believes that all truth that natters is inner and externalizations are inherently deceptive. This thought is based on puritanical doctrines and the theme devise from “original sin” and “internal corruption”. And such a concept as “evil is the nature of mankind” (Bressler 764) permeates the whole story. This chapter will mainly analyze the “permanent sin” theme based on the main characters of Brown and Faith. Through describing these two protagonists, Hawthorne presented the conflicts of “Young Goodman Brown”and sublimating the “permanent sin”.