Thursday, July 16, 2009
Young Goodman Brown
I thought this story was very difficult to understand what was going on. From what I can tell the guide is like his soul or a ghost of his father or grandfather, but also represents the devil luring him deeper into the woods to find this meeting. It states that "he bears a considerable resemblance to him." He convinces him to go on by explaining he knew his family and helped his father and grandfather. He also says he is well acquainted to the town and the governor. All of the people that Goodman Brown met along the way were people he knew well. They were all people from his church that he knew and seemed in disbelief to see out in the woods. He also saw his wife Faith who was also among the corrupt in the "witch meeting." Goodman yells at Faith to "resist the Wicked one," and it seems to be the end of the spell, and the next day Goodman felt as if he dreamed the whole thing. To me this kind of represents if you have Faith you can resist the devil.
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While i agree with how you stated having faith helps you resist the devil, i think the idea of faith played a more symbolic role in the text. In the beginning when he leaves his house and says by to Faith (his wife) it also symbolized him leaving his own faith and he ends up holding on to it as long as possible before he leaves. Later on when he saw the vision on Faith while alone in the words it was his last glimpse of his fleeting faith before giving in the devil and his ways.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought it was wonderful that they gave the guide similar characteristics to Goodman because you almost wanted to relate with the guide and want to connect with him in a certain way. At first, I thought the guide was his doppleganger because he meets the giude in the woods and the woods is where he has that tragic "dream". to make a note about faith, I definitely saw the symbolism here with this name. But it's also interesting how once you see the true side of people and see who sin makes up a part of their lives, you somewhat lose your own faith, and I think that when he "saw" and "heard" the things he did at this witch ceremony, he literally lost faith in everything.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this story was a bit hard to understand. I like the idea of if you have "faith" you can resist the devil. I think Hawthorne was tryng to show the duality in human nature also, and that everyone has an evil/dark side to them. He displays this by showing all of the townspeople, even the pastor.
ReplyDeleteHas the thought ever came that the guide was Goodman Brown's doppelganger? I kind of thought about that when it said the guide looked like him but older. I did think the story was very hard to follow and i actually didn't even think about the guide being the devil until we talked about it in class. I did like how the author used a play on words such as Faith and Goodman Brown.
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