An 8 page argumentative paper arguing that Hawthorne is revealing more than spiritual struggle in his story 'Young Goodman Brown.' Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_Goodbr.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the author and how that permeates his work. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a unique writer of his time. While most of his literary contemporaries were moving out of the Puritan frame
of mind in their work; Hawthorne re-examined the universal themes of the dichotomy of a physical person attempting to live a spiritual existence. How does one reconcile the human flesh
with the godly spirit? Which one is to be prominent and if the spiritual must dominate what is to be done with the insistent flesh? "Hawthorne dealt with a fictive
world, but at the same time explored what Henry James would call later "the deeper psychology of art" (McQuade 1652). He was the one of the few American writers of
his day to focus on the internal workings of his characters and seek to explore their relationship to sin, guilt, anguish and suffering. Where Emerson was trying to pull the
people out into the optimistic future, Hawthorne haunted them with their Puritan past"(Ganjvar 3). He was very much the brooding somber person. " He also
dressed in black, and often concealed his frame and face from onlookers by wearing a black cloak, perhaps as "a symbol of a fearful secret between him and them." Indeed,
from Melville to modern Freudians, Hawthornes fearful secret has been the subject of speculation. But whatever it was and whatever were the factors that shaped his disposition, the novelist felt
a deep sadness tinged with sympathy for the human condition" (Barna).. Hawthorne, though he felt no particular allegiance to one church
was still very rooted in religious principles that defined his life in New England. In his story Young Goodman Brown Hawthorne explores a "fearful secret" in veiled and metaphorical