1820-1865: Short Answer Quiz

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”


  1. “Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth, and after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven” (1264). Much of goodman Brown’s faith is centered in the characters around him, whether those be his wife or the ministers of his church, and as one by one they are revealed in their corruption, Brown sees their true natures as a sort of betrayal. Explain Brown’s disillusionment in the context of the external nature of his faith.

  1. Much attention centers around the twisted serpent’s staff of goodman Brown’s companion: it is the only thing that distinguishes him from a worldly man of the village, and it passes from him, to Brown, to goody Cloyse. Describe the influence of this staff on the story. What does it symbolize?

  1. The narrator will not say whether or not young goodman Brown dreamt the entire episode in the forest. The next morning, the narrator calls the minister “the venerable saint,” terms goody Cloyse “the excellent old Christian,” and describes Faith “bursting into joy at sight of him.” Depending on whether or not Brown is right about the villagers’ hypocrisy, these descriptions may or may not be ironic. How would Brown’s “desperate” life after this night in the forest appear to someone who had no knowledge of what he had seen? Do you read Brown’s eventual end as ironic, given what you know?

  1. What influence does the way Puritans value outward expressions of faith and righteousness have on young goodman Brown’s disillusionment? Do you take the fact that Brown’s funeral was well attended by his family and neighbors as evidence they regarded him an example of a good Puritan, despite the fact that his faith in his wife and friends had been stripped away? “His dying hour was gloom,” and we can assume from the story’s last paragraph that he was consistently gloomy from the moment he awoke from the night in the forest until his death. But if he were never sure that his neighbors were not lying in their expressions of faith, and would expect them to lie anyway if they followed the devil, does the story record his example as a success or a failure in the context of his religion?



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