Good morning!

My name is Ioana Vicol and today I will present you the article which I have
choosen for my presentation. It is called Narative Structure and Theme in Young Goodman
Brown.

In the following moments I want to present some major features from Norman H.
Hostetler’s article and they are: the major theme of the short story, charachters, and
narrator and the narrative structure.

1. When it comes about the major theme is represented by the conscious awareness of
the characters concerning the reality in bound with the external world. His
characters are confronted by this need to estabilish the relationship between
imaginary perceptions and external world and they had the ability to develope a
moral relationship with others.
The ability to make distinctions between the products of the mind.
Here, Goodman Brown represents the misjudgement concerning perception and
reality. He has a lack of awareness about controlling the power of the mind.

2. Hawthorne’s narrator lives out of the story line. He is in a tension with Goodman
Brown who provides different point os view. From this fact comes the irony of the
work and from here Hawthorne develops his criticism.

Interpretations have given the fct that Brown is deluded and he is making such
serious error in judgment so that Hawthrone should differentiate the narrator and
Brown.
Brown’s experience is A DREAM, A VISION, OR A HALLUCINATION, but they are more
bound to the individual choice.

The narrator’ s description of events is characterised by ambiguity seen as an uncertain light

and it is playng everywhere causing confusion and making anything objective. He accept that
Brown’ s conductor in the forest is the devil and the fac that Brown sees there Goody Cloyse,
the minister and Deacon Gookin. They are described as figures and forms. Apparently, they
have taken the shape of the person whose name they use and this element comes from
Brown’s perception not from the narrator’s. For him ambiguity is an imposibility because he
is sure about these identifications despite that they become more ambiguous during they
journey in the forest.

In the first instance, the narrator says that Brown sees the figure of a man which seems to
resemble with his father and grandfather. He strats thinking if the devil should be at his
elbow and it causes the tenor of his thoughts, assuming that the figure is the evil.

In the second instance, the narrator is restricted in constructions which suggest less validity
to Brown’s perceptions. The apparition of the female figure on the path is, intially seen as an
exemplary dame, an then recognisez as Goody Cloyse because he cast up his eyes in
astonisment. The figure of the female can be identified as Brown’s moral and spiritual
adviser. The minister and the Deacon are not figures, but they exist as familiar voices of his
town and particullary the young voice of a woman is resembling him forom Faith, his wife,
and made him to cry. Here comes famous PINK RIBBON- representing Brown’s past
hallucinations. The ribbon is seen as a part and parcel of his dreams, like everything else. The
ribbon is the gap between the narrator’s ambiguity of description and Brown’s certainity of
identification. The fact of the ribbon is ironic because the narrator hast the last word, he
presents the next morning with Faith wearing the ribbon in opposite of brown s perceptions
about the something.

The effect of this divergence is to estabilish the credibility for the narrator. The narrator’s
poin of view is reinforced by the objectivity and the unemotional tone, specific for the 17
century.

When it comes about to Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne has shown that Brown s source of
significant ideas is Brown himself. He goes in the forest in search of the evil, the sin,morality
– the source is a person or a place- something external of himself.

Hawthorne put the narrator in the instance that brown has carried all his ideas of the Devil
and then that he is the evil. He refuses to admitt that the evil and its parts are elements of
the human nature.

The narrator notes from the beginning that all actions, good intentions are presented in the
future.

Goodman feels justified in future actions in the moment when he recognizes the present
purpose of teh evil. His companion appears just after he express the idea of THE DEVIL
HIMSELF might be present.

The Devil is one of the false guides, encouraging people to extend partial truths. He laso
admitts that the source of devil stays in the human nature and it can be seen in Brown’ s
relationships. Sustain the idea that everybody commits to the evil as your own happines.
( brown). Now he will encourage Brown to refuse baptism.

The narrator Insists on ironiy by the fact that Brown is followed by Faith, an ironic inversion
on Brown’s previous belief that he would follow Faith to Heaven. It will happen noy because
Faith is an angel, it will happen because he accepts humanity in their conditions.

Brown- deluded, deranged person, accetpts the social relationships as they are and lost the
power to create moral relationships