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Young Goodman Brown Essay

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Literary analyzes of “Young Goodman Brown” “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story about a normal man that ventures into the forest to meet an old man who attempts to tempt him into going deeper into the woods to worship the devil. After the old man convinces him that everyone that he loves and respects is going to the devil’s ceremony he gives in. In “Young Goodman Brown”, Hawthorne effectively uses symbolism to portray the theme that putting one 's faith in others leads to weakness and the role his psychological developed plays in his morality. The Characters in “Young Goodman Brown” are meant to represent society as a whole. They show how sin can tempt any individual whose faith is still developing. D. M. Mckeithan …show more content…

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The old man uses an everybody is doing it approach to encourage Goodman Brown to attend a ceremony to worship the Devil. The old man shows the people Goodman Brown respected most in his community to degrade his faith. As Goodman Brown loses faith in others, he loses faith in himself. Mckeithan continues to say, “The Minister of Salem Village, Deacon Gookin, Goody Closyse, and Faith were all good in spite of what Goodman Brown eventually came to think of them (96). These are people that were supposedly more spiritually mature than Goodman Brown. He relied on their faith to keep his strong because his faith in God was still new and not fully developed. The psychology of Goodman Brown plays a major rule in his lack of faith because his lack of self esteem allows his desires overcome his reason and morality. Goodman Brown’s conflicts of interest are represented throughout story through the characters. All his evil desires are his id and his reason for avoiding his sin such as the views that his society will have on him is his ego. Levy said in his essay “The Problem of Faith in “Young Goodman Brown””, “His submission to evil suggests that the demands of the id have overtaken the ego” (379). When the highly respected people in his

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