Nataniel Hawthorne’s Short-Story, Essay Example

Nataniel Hawthorne’s short-story “Young Goodman Brown” is an allegory. An allegory is a story where the people, things, and places of the story have two levels of meaning. In the story, the figure of the “traveler” that was encountered by Goodman Brown has two meanings. On one level, the traveler is simply another man that Goodman Brown meets in the forest. At another level, the figure symbolizes Goodman Brown’s own inner-devil, or his capacity to be evil. The story is therefore a story of Goodman Brown’s confrontation with the hidden dark side of society and himself. In this way, the text of the story is much more densely packed with meaning than in a story that does not offer an allegorical level. It is as though the author gives clues to the double-meaning of the story through the words and descriptions of the text. Because of this, the scene where Goodman Brown meets the traveler is a very important scene. Given that the figure of the traveler has two meanings, we would expect to find some hint of just what the symbolic implication of the figure is in the initial description of Goodman Brown’s meeting with him. A single passage from this part of the story, in fact, reveals a great deal about the allegorical aspect of the work.

In the passage where Goodman Brown meets the traveler, the language of the description indicates that it may be that Goodman Brown is actually meeting his own alter-ego. Hawthorne writes: “It was now deep dusk in the forest and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him,” (Hawthorne, 1888, p. 62). Obviously, the words “bearing a considerable resemblance to him” are the most clear sign that Hawthorne intends for the reader to view the traveler as the personification of Goodman Brown’s “dark side.” The fact that the traveler is the same age as Brown and looks like him, physically, is an overt clue to the reader that in the allegory of the story, the traveler is symbolic of another aspect of Goodman Brown’s self.

With this established it is then important to find out what that aspect of Brown’s self actually is, and what is significant about his meeting that aspect of himself. Again, a cue to this is given in the passage cited above. Just as the description of the traveler is important, the description of the setting where the two meet is important. Hawthorne describes the setting: “now deep dusk in the forest and deepest in that part of it” (Hawthorne, 1888, p. 63).  This tells the reader some very important things about the allegorical connections of the story. The fact the meeting takes place at dusk in the deep forest lets the reader know that the traveler is part of nature and perhaps an animistic emanation of the natural world. To the Puritans, nature was a place of mystery and evil. The world of nature was a world of darkness, beasts, and danger.

What Hawthorne is coding into the story is that the old man is a symbol for the Puritan conception of the devil. At the same time, the figure of the traveler stands for the dark side of Goodman Brown that is hidden to his daily self, but is a part of human nature. Human beings are born from nature and so they naturally have a mysterious and sinful nature. The devil is the ruler of nature and therefore is also the ruler of sin. Hawthorne is using the external description of the scenery to probe internal, non-physical subjects such as sin and morality. What he is really exploring is the nature of evil and the way that trying to distance oneself from evil often results in precisely the opposite outcome. By ignoring the inner capacity for sin and the human natural capacity to act in immoral ways, the Puritan became blind to the reality of nature .

References

Poe, E. A. (2000). Thirty-Two Stories (S. Levine & S. F. Levine, Eds.). Indianapolis: Hackett.