Young Goodman Brown Character Names

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Chelsea Azore English Evans Oct 33, 2013 Essay: Young Goodman Brown In the story “Young Goodman Brown”, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes a story about a young man who is searching for religious clarity. The main character, Young Goodman Brown, is someone who is trying to follow is religion down to the T of what is said to be right. As he travels through a forest where he finds that people in his community that he respects taking part in things that are considered against the Puritan religion. The characters in the story play a big role in the main character quest for religious guidance as he decerns his path between good and evil. In the story “Young Goodman Brown”, Hawthorn uses the setting of the forest and the characters as an analogy to convey the main characters physiological state of mind toward his views on religion. The setting in the short story mainly takes place in the forest. The main character Young Goodman Brown finds himself compelled to take a journey, while relying on his faith to return him back home in the state in which he leaves. The forest can be an analogy as Goodman Browns own mind, and the cluttered thoughts that plague his mind. The “innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead” help describe the setting. The reader can correlate this to the main character’s state of mind as him have having clouded thoughts that don’t allow him to see clearly. His journey through the forest can be related to him trying to find clarity in his own mind about his views on religion. In puritan society Goodman is a common name for the male head of the household. Young is added to the main character’s names because he is in his early years of life, which in many societies is considered a naive stage of life. His last name Brown is a way to identify him from other men in the town as everyones’s last name is a assumed to be different, but it is also a common

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