Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne - D. M. McKeithan (essay date 1952)

Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne - D. M. McKeithan (essay date 1952)

D. M. McKeithan (essay date 1952)

SOURCE: "Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown': An Interpretation," in Modern Language Notes, Vol. LXVII, No. 2, February, 1952, pp. 93-6.

[In the following essay, McKeithan observes that Hawthorne is more concerned with the demoralizing consequences of sin than with sin itself]

The majority of Hawthorne critics feel that "Young Goodman Brown" is one of the very best of Hawthorne's tales, but there is somewhat less certainty as to its meaning. The theme of the story has been variously stated as the reality of sin, the pervasiveness of evil, the secret sin and hypocrisy of all persons, the hypocrisy of Puritanism, the results of doubt or disbelief, the devastating effects of moral scepticism, or the demoralizing effects of the discovery that all men are sinners and hypocrites.

Mark Van Doren, in the fullest and most recent criticism [Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1949], gives a thorough analysis of the...

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