How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
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. (57)
There is something perversely democratic about the assembly. People from all branches of society come together. Our question: is Hawthorne suggesting that democracy itself is evil? Whoa. Mind blown.
Quote #8
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. (73)
Check out the way that all the things Goodman Brown hates involve a community spirit—prayer, worship, public singing. It's almost like his experience of the evil community in the woods has taught him to distrust communities of all kinds.
Quote #9
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.
Yep, this is not a family man. It's kind of a tragic ending: the cheerful, community-minded guy we knew has now become a bitter introvert. He's about two steps from moving to a cabin in the woods and mailing an anonymous letter to the newspaper, if you ask us.