Is Nathaniel Hawthorne's Failure In Young Goodman Brown

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Selected Short Stories Of Nathaniel Hawthorne According to Hawthorne, human being's biggest failure is inability to accept imperfection and to sense evil on their neighbor. In the book selected short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, this failure appears in form of a small birthmark in The Birthmark and an imaginary meeting with the devil and other people in Young Goodman Brown. In the short story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character Brown destroys his access to divinity by not having faith in the goodness of people around him. In The Birthmark, Aylmer didn't reach divinity as he failed to embrace individual imperfections. In order to access divinity the first step is to accept imperfection and this is a success in The Birthmark. Aylmer considered as imperfect the birthmark…show more content…
It is required to access such divinity. Thence, Brown in Young Goodman Brown cannot have access to divinity because although he once had it for his people and wife he decides to lose faith in trusting them after he finds himself standing alone in the forest. The evil Triumphed over the good. As evil defeated good, Brown had nothing to live for because there was nothing good coming so basically was stuck just living worrying of everyone around him. This is why he said: "And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave...they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom." In The Birthmark Hawthorne uses humans (specifically men) as transmitters of evil. In the story, Aylmer has his own flaws or imperfections which contribute to the flaws or imperfections of his wife Georgiana. Therefore it is not only the women that Hawthorne uses as a sign for evil. He possesses woman with flaws but as I just said, he also gives men the role of transmitters of evil. Based on the evidence above, it is clear that Hawthorne uses both sexes to introduce or expose his

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