Sample Literature Review On Goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown is a moral story about a Puritan minister, which is told by one religious leader. The author of the story is Nathaniel Hawthorne, who used unimportant concepts in order to show the story’s alternative meaning. In his allegorical story he symbolized the things and feelings in people’s life, like faith, love, fear and others, and different characters and setting are used to represent these feelings. The main character of the story, Goodman Brown ventures on a journey into the local forest and meets a devil, who tempts the man for different things. Young Brown must refuse that the temptations of the devil and come back to his village before the sunrise. During his journey in the forest he meets different people, who were consorting with the Devil. They all reflect different people in our life. We all meet various difficulties in our whole life, and we must struggle with them every day. Even the name of the main character, Goodman Brown, is very common and simple, which shows that it can be any person in life, and Young could mean somebody, who is inexperienced. It was obviously shown that he was newly married and just starting a new life. Brown’s wife, whose name is Faith, shows person’s faith in God or a greater power than himself., but he leaves his faith in God with his wife. Goodman thinks that he can sin and meet with the Devil because he made a promise to himself. The devil had a thing with him, which looked like a snake in the story of Adam and Eve. In that story the snake led Adam and Eve to their destruction by leading them to the Tree of Knowledge. This story is a bit similar to the story of Goodman Brown. In both stories they are seeking knowledge. Adam and Eve ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and they were expelled from their paradise. Goodman was also led by the Devil’s staff to the Devil's ceremony, which also crushes Goodman Brown's faith in himself. He loved his wife so much that he refused to carry out the errand. This time the Devil agrees with Goodman and tells him to return to stop Faith to come to harm as the old woman in front of them. However, Brown’s faith is already harmed because that mentioned woman in front of them was his moral and spiritual mentor, who taught him catechism, when he was young. The Devil talks to that woman and they continue to walk in that disbelief that he had witnessed. Afterward the Devil leaves him, and starts to think to himself about all that happened to him in that night. However, when he meets his wife at that night, he could not believe that. He loses his faith in God and even in himself. And when he comes back, he cannot look at his wife with the faith like he did before. After coming back to his village, he started to treat people in a different way. He stops believing in them and starts behaving differently. Salem was no his home any longer. He could not believe that this is the place that he was the night before. He feels himself like a stranger in a foreign place. He looks sadly and sternly after all the things happened in that night. Goodman Brown was hollowed when he found out that the potential for evil was set in everyone. He was so depressed and his life was extinguished, he was unable to face this truth and live with that. At the end he died alone and miserable, because he could not forget everything and was disappointed in everything surrounded.
The story is a bit focused on religion. In the story, it is clearly shown that all the people in a Salem village, including the main character – Goodman Brown, are religious people. The minister of Salem is a respectable pillar of the community, who is a follower of the devil. The author of the story Hawthorne was interested in accomplishing a sense of guilt in his story. By this story Hawthorne teaches the reader a definite moral lesson by the third person’s point of view. The great depth of the story is that it focuses o on society and mankind.
Of course, it is not a real life event and these events cannot happen in our real life. However, we should understand that not everything in our life can be as we expect. We must never lose our faith in ourselves and faith in God. In this story Young Goodman Brown illustrates the innocence and purity. He was young and inexperienced. He does not know that life consists of not only good sides, but sometimes bad sides as well. Therefore, Goodman’s path through the forest reflects our life. Our life is like passing through the forest with various difficulties. We have to overcome difficulties and have the time of our life. We gain knowledge, know the world and obtain experience during our life. Life difficulties we face every day in our life help us to be morally strong person and struggle with them. They teach us to be a human and have our own place in life. There are numerous different people we face in our life. They all have a definite place in our life, which help us to be a person and live our life.
In Goodman Brown Story, Nathaniel Hawthorne puts an emphasis on public morality. Brown seems more interested in how his faith is shown to people than with the fact that he has made a decision to meet with the devil in a forest. Goodman Brown loses his innocence in that forest, and it was inevitable. Goodman Brown never knew if it was a dream or reality, but he believed that all people around him were corrupt, because they all were in league with the devil.