Young Goodman Brown
February 24, 2010
I just read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story Young Goodman Brown. Great!
This story really pushes the reader to consider how we run amok when we try to become ultra pure and holy. We’ve all met people like Goodman who, when they are confronted by the ugliness of the human condition, draw the wrong conclusion and miss the point entirely.
In reaction to sin, Goodman isolates himself on his own little island of holiness–and becomes a complete failure as a human being. Ouch. The darkness of the story is its own irony.
Hawthorne seems to suggest that we cannot focus on the opposite of an idea and thereby escape it. We cannot focus on sin and thereby escape it. Hawthorne asks the question: can we find goodness if we’ve trained our eyes to see only badness–in ourselves, in the world, and in other people, especially in those closest to us?
There’s no sense doing violence to Hawthorne’s prose by attempting to summarize the story itself; it only takes 12-15 minutes to read. Get it from the library. Or borrow my copy. Or download it for free. Or read it online.
Read: go forth and be thoughtful.
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read the rest from this author. Marc is a local writer, musician, and physician. He is a regular contributor to ConneXions and has written reviews for Spectrum: Adventist Forum. He loves words and music, windsurfing, and going on adventures with Janine and the kids.(Read more from this author) 
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