The Allegory in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown Essay -- Young Goodman

The Allegory in Young Goodman Brown It is the purpose of this essay to luff that Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown is indeed an allegory. M. H. Abrams defines an allegory as a narrative, whether in prose or verse, in which the agents and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, atomic number 18 artificial by the author to make coherent sense on the literal, or primary, level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated rescript of signification (5). Yvor Winters in Maules Curse, or Hawthorne and the Problem of Allegory says that Hawthorne is essentially an allegorist (11). Stanley T. Williams in Hawthornes Puritan Mind states that the author was always perfecting his delicate chicane of the symbol, of allegory (42). A. N. Kaul states In an effort to apprehend and adequately reflect the new complexity of mans life, he Hawthorne molded the venerable in his solecism directly inherited allegorical method into the modern technique of symbolis m (3). It is quite obvious from the names of the characters in the short story that their names are contrived to give a secondary signification. Goodman is on the primary level a simple husband who is following his curiosity about evil on the level of secondary signification he is Everyman or the new Adam R. W. B. Lewis in The Return into Rime Hawthorne states Finally, it was Hawthorne who saw in American experience the deviation of the story of Adam and who . . . exploited the active metaphor of the American as Adam before and during and after the Fall (72). Goodman responds in this way to the fellow-traveller when the latter implicates the governor in devilish deeds Can this be so cried Goodman Brown, with... ...t/nh/nhhj1.html Kaul, A.N. Introduction. In Hawthorne A Collection of Critical Essays, change by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Leavis, Q.D. Hawthorne as Poet. In Hawthorne A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewoo d Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Lewis, R. W. B. The Return into Time Hawthorne. In Hawthorne A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Williams, Stanley T. Hawthornes Puritan Mind. In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press, 1996. Winters, Yvor. Maules Curse, or Hawthorne and the Problem of Allegory. In Hawthorne A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.