Nathaniel Hawthorne Some of you know The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne's writing almost always focuses on themes of transgression and guilt, especially relating to the Puritan past. Issues of morality and responsibility rather than "self-reliance."  Dark side rather than sunny "Nature." Individual conscience (self) / laws (society) Also dramatizes the psychological, and problems of interpretation.

Hawthorne is a symbolist more than a realist, and YGB is an allegory -- the entire story is an extended metaphor representing one thing in the guise of another. Surface narrative that gives one meaning, but a second meaning underneath. Characters are personifications of abstract qualities (Goodman Brown takes leave of his "Faith"). Other characters represent institutions: church (Deacon), school (Goody).

1. When do you know it's an allegory?
2. Is the story dream or reality, or something in-between?  What evidence do you have for either?
3. What does the forest symbolize in the story? Why important that the action in the story happens there?
4. Which is more "real" in the story, good or evil?
5. What is his "sin"? What would he be granted at the “communion”?
6. Is it New England's moral universe that changes in the story or Brown's?
7. Is Brown finally a "Goodman"?
8. What questions do you have? 

Initiation

Both stories describe the experience of immature, arrogant young men; both underestimate the impediments in their respective paths. In both, the voice, third-person omniscient, allows Hawthorne to keep a distance from characters, present them ambivalently. Robin is a "shrewd" youth, when we sense he's not so. The innkeeper asks Robin, “From the country, I presume, sir (795). Robin is also a bumpkin to make him the opposite of MM, who Robin supposes is a well-respected gentleman. However, when we see the Major being tarred and feathered--whether it was a dream or reality--we realize the Major is, in fact, lower and less respected than Robin. Why such a Bumpkin? Because it's an initiation story, but Hawthorne is also investigating the darker side of the American dream, putting personal ambition before responsibility.

Dream and Reality

In both, all the characters are reassembled at the end, kind of a "This is your life" or a trial, as in a witch trial. Both are of humble standing, and both leave their pure and innocent homes to go on dark journeys to unfamiliar places where they meet odd strangers, and, in the end, they find out they did not know some people as well as they thought: YGB’s wife Faith and Robin’s kinsman. They were also unsure if they were dreaming when they see these people in very unexpected situations. “Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a with meeting?” (812). And a gentleman inquires, “Well, Robin, are you dreaming?” (803).

Allegory

Dramatizes a larger experience or even meditation, which is interpretation. Complex questions rather than easy answers. The apparent naiveté of Robin and Young Goodman Brown are symbolic of the human tendency to be too trusting in a world of which is represented by the almost ever-present darkness in which both men carry their searches. The uncertainty of both Robin and Young Goodman Brown as to whether they were dreaming is symbolic or our inability to see things as they really exist.

Emerson

Writing to him was always allegorical, so perhaps he would see the brilliance. On the other hand, the truth that Goodman Brown discovers is that everything he loved and cherished is tainted and corrupt. His world is turned upside down, and all of this occurs in nature. Emerson would have also questioned YGB’s “reliance” on other people. Emerson also said, “Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind”(497). The twist is that the language Hawthorne uses represents nature in an evil, tainted manner, therefore, possibly showing that humans are innately bad. He uses nature to paint a scene of doom, corruption, and wild abandonment.

	YGB	MKMM
Narration	3^rd person omniscient, distance	3^rd person, but “shrewd youth,” but more sympathetic?
setting	Forest, dark / soul	City (no recognizable pattern) / material
plot	Immature, arrogant young men, who underestimate the impediments in the journey
characters	Characters are reassembled; this is your life. Devil.	Robin is naïve for thinking people good, whereas YGB for believing they are bad?
theme	Spiritual ambition / new inquiry /	Material ambition
Style / form	Dream or reality, "blackness" Allegorical

“Hawthorne and His Mosses” by Melville.