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   cybil Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

   eNotes Editor

   Hawthorne's use of ambiguity permeates all of his work. Near the end of this story, he says:

   Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?

   Be it so if you will; but, alas! It was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.

   The reader is left to wonder whether Goodman Brown's experience in the forest was real or only a dream. Regardless of which it was, however, the effect was the same: he became a man who was suspicious of everybody--his wife, his minister--everyone. He lives the remainder of his life in misery, believing that no one can be trusted because of what he believes he saw in the forest.

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   Posted by cybil on Sunday February 1, 2009 at 9:48 AM