Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne - Walter J. Paulits (essay date 1970)

Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne - Walter J. Paulits (essay date 1970)

Walter J. Paulits (essay date 1970)

SOURCE: "Ambivalence in 'Young Goodman Brown'," in American Literature, Vol. XLI, No. 4, January, 1970, pp. 577-84.

[In the following essay, Paulits characterizes Hawthorne's tale as one in which the dominant theme is the ambivalence of the human heart when presented with a choice between good and evil.]

My hope in this article is that a discussion of ambivalence and of its concomitants of temptation and deception may provide the still-missing clue to the interpretation of the intent of "Young Goodman Brown." I am distinguishing sharply between ambiguity and ambivalence. Ambiguity is concerned with intermingled meanings—the double meanings in the witches' prophecies to Macbeth or Fedallah's to Ahab, or the amphibologies in Quince's Prologue to "Pyramus and Thisbe" in Midsummer Night's Dream or its antecedent in Ralph Roister Doister. Ambivalence is concerned with opposed feelings within...

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