Hawthorne, one of the world’s greatest novelist in 19th century, enjoys high fame for his rich output and outstanding writing style. He has been dubbed the “pioneer in psychological-analysis novel”, “novelist of romance” and “novelist rich in symbolism”. Not surprisingly, he gains full praise due to profound description in characters’ psychology and social environment. Standing as a literary giant, Hawthorne continues to attract the world’s attention with his unique artistry. Typically, the study of the works written by Hawthorne, both at home and abroad, are numerous.
Young Goodman Brown is one of the most excellent short novels in American literary, which offers Hawthorne a wide range of fame and popularity. It derives from Mosses from an Old Manse, a collection of his short stories published in 1843. The title of this grateful collection, Old Manse, proof by facts, is the house sheltering Hawthorne and his beloved wife in their first three married years. Typically, scholars and researchers mainly analyze Young Goodman Brown from the following aspects.
Above all, for the first classification, scholars pay their great attention to the “Puritanism” and “evil” that Hawthorne planted in his story. Apart from these aspects, there are still a great tribe of academics attach their importance to the images and their corresponding significance in Young Goodman Brown. In addition, the researchers significantly study the masterpiece from the perspective of Freud’s psychoanalysis. They dig into the characters’ inner world and then bring out the realistic significance of this world-famous short novel.
Hawthorne planted several certain time points to unfold the picture of night journey into forest in Young Goodman Brown, and thus left we readers a lot to ponder over and figure out. Hawthorne set several time arrangements in this novel, such as “sunset”, “deep dusk” and “the next morning”, to color the plot as well as its profound themes.
The night journey deep into forest took place in Salem, a town northeast of Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Salem, by the way, is Hawthorne’s birthplace and is now a museum. In 1692, there burst out witch trials in Salem. Twenty innocent women and men were blindly deemed guilty and were thus executed, which made much of a splash then. Young Goodman Brown was exactly set under such an underground. Brown set out his journey at sunset, spent a wild night of witch-meeting, and thus returned to the village in the next morning. Hawthorne, meanwhile, recognized that evil is inevitable in human nature. 纳撒尼尔•霍桑《年轻的古德曼•布朗》叙事策略(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_36699.html