E. Nicole Coxwell
ENGL3301.01
Dr. Henry
October 17, 2018
Insight of Goodman Brown
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown”, Goodman Brown ends up having an interesting experience that allows him to learn or think he learns a lot about the people who he thought he knew in his town. He sees that people are not who he thought they were and that they were corrupt. The Devil and their own sins had seemed to have taken over and they were not the Christians that he thought they were. The Devil even tries to inform Goodman Brown of people who were susceptible to sin.
“I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war.”
This is showing the idea that persecuting people on the basis of their religious faith or ethnic origins is evil. This is implying that the people Goodman Brown thought were good Christians and good people are acting more in the ways of the Devil rather then in the ways of Christ. It seems to me that Goodman Brown has missed what the Devil is ...
