Young Goodman Brown | Social Concerns/Themes
Turning to the history of New England as he did for so many of his tales, Hawthorne centers his attention in this tale on the effects of the rigid Puritan theocracy on a young man who has begun to doubt the goodness of those around him. Drawing on the history of his ancestors, the writer creates a story which is a subtle inversion of a traditional New England Puritan theme: the errand into the wilderness. The men and women who fled religious persecution and settled the rocky area north of the Long Island Sound and along the Atlantic coast saw themselves as bringing God's word to the...
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