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   jk180 Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   I find the most compelling passage to be the conversation that Young Goodman Brown has with the devil in the forest, particularly the devil's assertion that he has "been as well acquainted with [Young Goodman Brown's] family as with ever a one among the Puritans." For me, this passage gets at the heart of the story. There's nothing wrong with reading Hawthorne's piece as a story of suspense or of the supernatural, but I like to read it as a reflection on the question of inherited sin. The main character's male predecessors, we learn, persecuted innocent people in awful ways: "lash[ing] the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem" and "set[ting] fire to an Indian village." (Of course, the devil could be making all this up!) Young Goodman Brown (like most or all of us) has to struggle with the weight of his own family history.

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   Posted by jk180 on Tuesday October 27, 2009 at 2:07 PM