Archetypal+Analysis+of+Young+Goodman+Brown

media type="custom" key="12901424" align="center" media type="custom" key="12879332"The most prevalent archetype in the story is the journey. The journey is defined when the hero “descends into a real or psychological hell and is forced to discover the blackest truths, quite often concealing his faults” (Archetypes and Symbols). Young Goodman Brown’s journey begins at sunset, as he takes leave of his young wife, Faith, on an errand that is unknown to her. This symbolic shedding of faith and setting forth into the dark indicate an evil purpose to Goodman Brown’s errand. As his journey brings Goodman Brown ever deeper into the darkening forest, he meets the devil, or at least an incarnation of evil, in the form of a stranger on the path who seems to have been waiting for him. Goodman Brown meets several more familiar faces along the trail, including Goody Cloyse, who had taught him his catechism, and Deacon Gookin, which make him second guess his piety. His faith had been a bulwark against the fulfillment of his unholy errand, but with each passerby his resolve is tested, until finally he exclaims “My Faith is gone!”, and “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given” (Hawthorne 159). With a new realization of the lies that permeated his religious foundation, Goodman Brown submits to the dominance of sin, and is enveloped by the tainted darkness of the forest. In this new state of awareness, he begins to rush through the forest as if possessed, becoming that which had frightened him previously. media type="custom" key="12879346"This descent into doubt and madness leads directly into another archetype within the story, the ritual. The ritual “refers to an organized ceremony that involves honored members of a given community and an initiate” (Archetypes and Symbols). In his demoniac state, Goodman Brown comes upon a clearing containing a raging bonfire and a stone altar. Present at this scene are townsfolk from every station of life, while horrors and demonic forms roiled among wisps of smoke in the air. This, as Thomas F. Walsh, Jr. states, “represented the complete perversion of all that he once held dear” (333). He is then summoned to the altar by a dark man, whereupon he reunites with his wife, Faith, who is also being initiated. This dark man, no doubt the same stranger Brown had met earlier, tells the pair that “evil is the nature of mankind” (Hawthorne 162). Just before being sanctified into this blasphemous brotherhood, Goodman Brown rediscovers his faith and suddenly finds himself waking up, alone, in the forest. There is no evidence of the ritual ever taking place. Was it all just a dream? Regardless, Goodman Brown is still profoundly affected by the night’s events. The conclusions he gathered from this leads to yet another archetype present in the story. media type="custom" key="12879356"Returning to town, Goodman Brown is a changed man. This transformation of character embodies the archetype known as the fall. The fall “describes a descent in action from a higher to a lower state of being, an experience which might involve defilement, moral imperfection, and/or loss of innocence”(Archetypes and Symbols). Truly, there is depravity now in all he sees. From that morning on, religious devotions are wrought with a kind of sinful fraud. Both his wife Faith, and his faith as a spiritual compass, which Goodman Brown clung to so fiercely to deliver him from wickedness, no longer hold any significant meaning and are themselves considered tainted. Writer Michael Tritt stresses that “Brown comes to believe all men corrupt and inevitably evil” (114). media type="custom" key="12879360"The use of these three archetypes help guide the story to a meaningful, albeit somber conclusion, but several more can undoubtedly be found within the subtleties of “Young Goodman Brown. Through these archetypes, Nathaniel Hawthorne does effectivey, as Walsh states, “tell the story of a man, young and naïve in the ways of the world, who, finding that men are not all good, became so convinced that they are all bad that he could not remove the doubt of universal evil from his mind” (332). media type="youtube" key="-hzMyapahCk?version=3" height="360" width="640" align="center"

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