Young Goodman Brown Themes
Community
You could think of young Goodman Brown's Salem as a less, uh, cheerful 17th-century version of the bar from Cheers. It's the kind of place where everybody knows your name. And your father's name....
Good vs. Evil
"Young Goodman Brown" is a story of good and evil at their most extreme. Okay, so it's not quite Lord of the Rings. But the life of one man can be an epic struggle between good and evil, even with...
Memory and the Past
Making a "Young Goodman Brown" guide without a "Memory and the Past" section is like skydiving without a parachute, or like making brownies without eggs: possible, but you're not going to like the...
Versions of Reality
Confusion isn't always a bad thing. We here at Shmoop are die-hard fans of intricate spy movies, tilt-a-whirl rides, and lots of other sources of weirdly enjoyable confusion. One of the greatest t...
Loss of Innocence
Hawthorne is pretty straightforward about what becomes of our hero in "Young Goodman Brown": "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become" (73). No su...