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The Importance of Setting, Epiphany or Allegory in a Short Story
Choose ONE of the following three questions for your written response. Take a few minutes to prepare your answer, focus on analysis and avoid any plot summary. We all know the events in the two stories we covered thus far. Avoid repeating the narrative plot or describing events in detail. Rather, focus on analyzing how one of these elements, either epiphany, or setting, or allegory functions in your chosen story. Please, remember that you should choose only one of the stories we covered this week and answer only one of the three questions below.
The first question focuses on the moment of epiphany or the sudden and often complete moment of revelation that changes the character The second question explores how setting (location, place, imagery) contributes to the main ideas and themes. The last question asks you to examine “Young Goodman Brown” as an allegory. Always support your main points with references/examples from the text, but avoid long quotes in this assignment.
Your written response should be as specific as possible and no longer than one full page.
1. Analyze the moment of epiphany in one of the stories we covered in class. How does the author prepare us for the moment of revelation? What is the nature of a character’s epiphany? How does it affect the character? How does it relate to the main theme(s) in the story?
2. Explore how setting functions in one of the stories we discussed thus far. How does it relate to plot development and character transformation? What major patterns of imagery does the setting reveal? How does it relate to the main theme(s) in the story?
3.”Young Goodman Brown” provides more than one allegorical interpretation. In addition to its complex symbolic descriptions, this story also provides a consistently parallel level of meaning that carries a moral, historical or political lesson. What is your understanding of “Young Goodman Brown” as allegory?
Please Please Please do not use any AI BOTS OR ANYTHING my teacher runs this through turnitin and checks for AI use of any kind.
I will attach “Young Goodman Brown” here.
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YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but
put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young
wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street,
letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman
Brown.
“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close
to his ear, “prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night.
A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself
sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”
“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the
year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and
back again, must needs be done ‘twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost
thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?”
“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you find all
well when you come back.”
“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at
dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the
corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after
him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I to
leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was
trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no,
no; ‘t would kill her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one
night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified
in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened
by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path
creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there
is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed
by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he
may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.
“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to
himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if the devil himself
should be at my very elbow!”
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward
again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old
tree. He arose at Goodman Brown’s approach and walked onward side by side with him.
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“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was
striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone.”
“Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice,
caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two
were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty
years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a
considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still
they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as
simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of
one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor’s dinner
table or in King William’s court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither.
But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which
bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen
to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular
deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
“Come, Goodman Brown,” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace for the
beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary.”
“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, “having kept
covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have
scruples touching the matter thou wot’st of.”
“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us walk on,
nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are
but a little way in the forest yet.”
“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk.
“My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We
have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and
shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept”
“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person, interpreting his
pause. “Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as
with ever a one among the Puritans; and that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather,
the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem;
and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set
fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war. They were my good friends, both; and
many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I
would fain be friends with you for their sake.”
“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never spoke of
these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have
driven them from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and
abide no such wickedness.”
“Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff, “I have a very
general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk
the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman;
and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The
governor and I, too–But these are state secrets.”
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“Can this be so?” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his
undisturbed companion. “Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council;
they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I
to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at
Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day.”
Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit
of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually
seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he again and again; then composing himself, “Well, go on,
Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don’t kill me with laughing.”
“Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown, considerably
nettled, “there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I’d rather break
my own.”
“Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “e’en go thy ways, Goodman
Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith
should come to any harm.”
As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman
Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism
in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and
Deacon Gookin.
“A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at
nightfall,” said he. “But with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until
we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I
was consorting with and whither I was going.”
“Be it so,” said his fellow-traveller. “Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the
path.”
Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion,
who advanced softly along the road until he had come within a staff’s length of the old
dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a
woman, and mumbling some indistinct words–a prayer, doubtless–as she went. The
traveller put forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent’s
tail.
“The devil!” screamed the pious old lady.
“Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?” observed the traveller, confronting
her and leaning on his writhing stick.
“Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?” cried the good dame. “Yea, truly is
it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly
fellow that now is. But–would your worship believe it?–my broomstick hath strangely
disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too,
when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf’s bane”
“Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe,” said the shape of old
Goodman Brown.
“Ah, your worship knows the recipe,” cried the old lady, cackling aloud. “So, as I
was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind
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to foot it; for they tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night.
But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling.”
“That can hardly be,” answered her friend. “I may not spare you my arm, Goody
Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will.”
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one
of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however,
Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment,
and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his
fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
“That old woman taught me my catechism,” said the young man; and there was a
world of meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion
to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments
seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself.
As they went, he plucked a branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to
strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The moment his
fingers touched them they became strangely withered and dried up as with a week’s
sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy
hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused
to go any farther.
“Friend,” said he, stubbornly, “my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge
on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought
she was going to heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after
her?”
“You will think better of this by and by,” said his acquaintance, composedly. “Sit
here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to
help you along.”
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as
speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat
a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear
a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of
good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very night, which was
to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith!
Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the tramp of
horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the
forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so
happily turned from it.
On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices,
conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the
road, within a few yards of the young man’s hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the
depth of the gloom at that particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were
visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it could not be
seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky
athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood
on tiptoe, pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without
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discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn,
were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon
Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination
or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a
switch.
“Of the two, reverend sir,” said the voice like the deacon’s, “I had rather miss an
ordination dinner than to-night’s meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to
be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island,
besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much
deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into
communion.”
“Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!” replied the solemn old tones of the minister.
“Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground.”
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air,
passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary
Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the
heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being
ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his
heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him.
Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.
“With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!”
cried Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his
hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the
brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this
black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the
depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener
fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own, men and
women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion table, and
had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he
doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without
a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at
Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a young
woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some
favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both
saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the
echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, “Faith! Faith!” as if bewildered wretches were
seeking her all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy
husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a
louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away,
leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly
down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and
beheld a pink ribbon.
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“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on
earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.”
And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman
Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the
forest path rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly
traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still
rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was
peopled with frightful sounds–the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and
the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and
sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to
scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other
horrors.
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him. “Let us
hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch,
come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman
Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you.”
In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than
the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff
with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now
shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons
around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast
of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a
red light before him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set
on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused,
in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a
hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the
tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse died
heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds
of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried
out, and his cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes.
At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a
rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit, and
surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at
an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the summit of the rock was
all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each
pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous
congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it
were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
“A grave and dark-clad company,” quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and
splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province,
and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly
over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of
the governor was there. At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives of
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honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent
repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the
sudden gleams of light flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous for their especial
sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable
saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and
pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were
men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and
filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank
not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among
their pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their
native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
“But where is Faith?” thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart,
he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious
love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and
darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after
verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of
a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if
the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the
unconcerted wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in
homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above the
impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth and formed a
glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken,
the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the
New England churches.
“Bring forth the converts!” cried a voice that echoed through the field and rolled
into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and
approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy
of all that was wicked in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his
own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath,
while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was
it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought,
when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms and led him to the
blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody
Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the
devil’s promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the
proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your race.
Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!”
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend
worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
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“There,” resumed the sable form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from youth.
Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it
with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they
all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret
deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the
young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows’ weeds, has
given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how
beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and how fair damsels-blush not, sweet ones–have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest
to an infant’s funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all
the places–whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest–where crime has been
committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood
spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery
of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil
impulses than human power–than my power at its utmost–can make manifest in deeds.
And now, my children, look upon each other.”
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man
beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
“Lo, there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone,
almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for
our miserable race. “Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue
were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be
your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.”
“Welcome,” repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the
verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did
it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid
flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism
upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious
of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their
own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted
wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they
disclosed and what they saw!
“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband, “look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one.”
Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself
amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away
through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a
hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem
village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a
walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and
bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable
saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the
holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. “What God doth the
wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian,
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stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her
a pint of morning’s milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of
the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith,
with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him
that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village.
But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a
greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream
of a witch-meeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman
Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he
become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation
were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly
upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit
with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred
truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or
misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should
thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at
midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the
family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his
wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary
corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly
procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his
tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.
(1835)
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