Irony, the contrast between what is expected and what
actually happens or is said, appears in its different forms throughout Hawthorne's
story, "Young Goodman Brown." In fact, even the title of this story is ironic,
representing from the beginning the hypocrisy often found in the Puritan. Here are some
examples:
- After telling Faith that he will just
go out this one night, "With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown
feels himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose." In his
Puritan sanctimony, Brown thinks nothing will happen to him when he attends the black
mass in the forest. - When the old man calls to him, Brown
explains that "Faith kept me back a while." At the end of the story, Brown, who has
admitted to abandoning his faith, sees all others as
faithless. - Goodman Brown tells his fellow-traveler that
his father never went into the woods
"on such as errand, nor his father before him.
We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the
martyrs."
But, the old man, who knows the hypocrisy of the Browns,
tells Young Goodman that he had helped his grandfather when he lashed the Quaker
woman, and he was with Brown's father when he set fire to the Indian village.
Brown's ancestors obviously were hypocrites to have said that they never went into the
woods.
- The man with the crooked staff
is also acquainted with many a deacon who has had communion with him at the black mass
in the forest. Goodman Brown asks how this can be so. Nevertheless, he says, he cannot
continue, for if the governor should see him, he could not face him. To this the "elder
traveller" replies, having recognizing the hypocrisy of his
remark,
"Ha! ha!ha!...Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on;
but prithee, don't kill me with
laughing!"
- When
Goody Cloyse and Deacon Gookin pass by, Goodman is shocked that they will attend the
black mass because Cloyse is his catechism teacher. In an act of verbal irony, Goody
Cloyse tells the elder traveller that Goodman Brown is really a silly fellow--just the
opposite of what Brown expects her to say. - The climax is
ironic, of course, as Goodman worries that harm will come to Faith, when it is he who
loses his faith in mankind as he becomes " a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a
distrustful, if not a desperate man" after that night of what he believes is his dream.
Ironically in the resolution of the story, Goodman Brown also becomes the hypocrite in
seeing others as having no faith, gazing sternly at his wife and turning away from
her.
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