To_Be_Evil_or_Not_to_Be

To Be Evil or Not to Be TO BE EVIL OR NOT TO BE…IS THAT THE QUESTION' “The man who walks with god always knows in what direction he is going” (qtd. in Punch Lines, Hutson). This quote has a direct irony in correlation to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of “Young Goodman Brown”. Hawthorne’s profound short story is a pilgrimage to revelation for one devout Christian man; the idea that mankind, being himself, is not without sin and far from saintly perfection. This discovery deludes the Goodman greatly. As a result, he alienates himself from his wife Faith and the community he resides in. Hawthorne’s usage of allegory and symbolism in this story shows how perilous excessive pride, moral superiority, and religious zealotry can be to one’s mortal existence. Young Goodman Brown is an upstanding man in the community. The use of allegory is obvious in his name. "Young" symbolizes his youth and immaturity. “Goodman” seems to imply that he represents all that is good in man. His wife is aptly named “Faith”, which symbolizes his faith in Christianity and commitment to rectitude. His faith is a little blind though; it borders on zealotry. To believe so blindly in the Bible verbatim, faith, brown, devil, evil, man, goodman, own, himself, sin, leads, forest, brown’s, one, darkness, without, moral, hawthorne’s, hawthorne, good, face, ceremony, upon, symbolizes, story, says, ribbons, knowledge, god, alone, wife, town, tale, staff, sins, refuses, pride, pink, perhaps, passage, others, marks, just, immaturity, dream, dark, based, 261, zealotry, young, wicked